Microsoft has unveiled an innovative open-source fork of Windows Terminal, aptly named Intelligent Terminal. This new iteration seamlessly integrates artificial intelligence into the terminal environment, allowing users to harness AI capabilities without disrupting their regular command-line sessions.
Described by Microsoft as a built-in assistant, Intelligent Terminal is designed to enhance user experience by providing support in various ways. It can assist in explaining errors, drafting commands, and troubleshooting issues—all within the terminal interface.
Two key features set Intelligent Terminal apart:
- The AI agent maintains awareness of ongoing terminal activities, stepping in to assist when a command fails.
- It retains memory of both active and past agent sessions, enabling users to pick up where they left off without losing context.
Source: BleepingComputer
Upon launching Intelligent Terminal for the first time, users are prompted to select their preferred AI agent for the terminal pane. Options include GitHub Copilot, Claude, Codex, and Gemini. Notably, GitHub Copilot is marked as “will be installed,” while the others are readily available.
Source: BleepingComputer
Users can customize their experience further with toggles for Automatic Error Detection and Automatic Error Suggestion. When enabled, error detection allows the terminal to identify failed commands, while error suggestion sends the error to the selected AI agent for potential solutions.
Another valuable feature is Session Management, which empowers Intelligent Terminal to track both active and previous agent sessions. This functionality enables users to revisit earlier work effortlessly.
Once configured, the Intelligent Terminal interface is user-friendly. An AI pane appears beneath the shell, greeting users with a warm “Welcome to Intelligent Terminal.”
Source: BleepingComputer
In a recent hands-on experience, the choice of Claude as the Terminal AI model facilitated various tasks, such as planning coding assignments and offering options for auto-accepting or manually approving edits.
Source: BleepingComputer
On the left side of the interface, users can toggle the visibility of the agent panel and control error detection. The right side features an agent management icon that opens the session management panel and displays the agent status bar.
Source: BleepingComputer
Intelligent Terminal’s Resume Session is one of its best features
As a developer, utilizing Claude Code within Windows Terminal has proven beneficial, yet the limitation of not being able to resume sessions in the standard Terminal has been a drawback. While Claude offers a built-in resume skill, it often leads to suboptimal performance.
Although the current Windows Terminal includes a toggle for reopening previously closed tabs, it does not restore prior sessions. Intelligent Terminal effectively addresses this gap by allowing users to resume sessions, facilitating a smooth transition back to earlier agent work.
While the concept of Terminal AI is promising, Microsoft recognizes that it may not cater to every user, which is why Intelligent Terminal is offered as a separate application and is not bundled with standard Windows installations. Interested users can download Intelligent Terminal from the Microsoft Store or GitHub.
