Show HN: Term-CLI – interactive terminals for AI agents (for SSH/TUI/REPL flows)

9 points

3 months ago

Agents can run non-interactive commands, but they often fail once a workflow needs a real terminal (SSH sessions, installers, debuggers, REPLs, TUIs). I built term-cli so an agent can drive an interactive terminal session (keystrokes in, output out, wait for prompts). And it comes with agent skill for easy integration.

It supports in-band file transfer: the agent can move files through the terminal stream itself (same channel as the interactive session), which is useful when the agent doesn’t have scp/sftp, shared volumes, or direct filesystem access across boundaries.

Recent example: My Claude Opus was SSH'd into a server and ended up at a Firejail shell running inside a Docker container. It pushed a Python file in via term-cli, moving it across SSH → Docker → Firejail over the terminal channel, and explicitly commented how it was surprised this worked end-to-end.

And it comes with the companion tool term-assist, so agents can bring in their human to handle credentials and MFA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A70tZEVqSOQ

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