TurtleTerm

They say the world was built on the back of a turtle. TurtleTerm carries the shell on its back.

The AI terminal that's faster than Warp, runs its AI fully local, and proves every agent action — then does all of Warp's tricks too.

TurtleTerm is a WezTerm-based terminal with a full AI agent fabric built in: inline command autosuggest, a self-hosted co-pilot, governed autonomous task execution, workflow libraries, and live session sharing — none of it cloud-locked, none of it metered.

Why TurtleTerm beats Warp

	TurtleTerm	Warp
Core speed	WezTerm / WebGPU (faster)	~8ms input latency
AI backend	Local (Ollama / Noetica) or Claude — your choice	Proprietary US cloud only
Cost to use AI	$0, self-hosted, no meter	$20/mo, 1,500 credits, or BYOK
Telemetry	None required	Must be ON to use AI on Free
Inline autosuggest	✅ local ghost text (~1ms history path)	✅ cloud
Workflow library	✅ turtle-drive, versioned in your Gitea	✅ Warp Drive (their cloud)
Live session sharing	✅ self-hosted over WezTerm mux	✅ their cloud
Autonomous agent	✅ plan→execute→verify, default-deny destructive	✅ agent mode
Replayable, attestable agent runs	✅ ReasoningRun/Event/Receipt/ReplayPlan, sealed tamper-evident	❌ nothing in this class
Voice→shell · personas · AI coach · cost tracking	✅	❌
Remote multiplexing	✅ native, no remote tmux	❌

Full honest head-to-head (our gaps included): docs/COMPETITIVE.md.

The arsenal (40+ commands)

• turtle-copilot — self-hosted AI co-pilot: error-explain, multi-turn chat, fix-memory recall, multi-backend (Claude / Ollama / Noetica)
• turtle-autonomous — governed plan→execute→verify agent; safe-by-default dry-run; emits replayable, sealable reasoning evidence
• turtle-drive — sovereign Warp Drive: parameterized workflows/runbooks, versioned in your own Gitea forge
• turtle-share — live session sharing over WezTerm mux; unix-socket / SSH, no cloud account
• turtle-gh / turtle-gitea — full gh CLI parity, Gitea-primary, with AI PR bodies + changelogs + review
• turtle-seal — seal reasoning receipts into externally-verifiable, tamper-evident evidence
• turtle-onboard guided first-run · turtle-diagnose health check · turtle-voice voice→shell · turtle-cost per-model AI spend
• MCP server (turtle-mcp-server) exposes the whole fabric to Claude Code.

TurtleTerm presents its own product surface: TurtleTerm launchers, TurtleTerm profile, TurtleTerm agent gateway, TurtleTerm release artifacts, and TurtleTerm skill manifests. Third-party notices and required license attribution are preserved in the repository license files and release artifacts.

Install

Tapless Homebrew install from this repository:

brew install --HEAD https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SourceOS-Linux/TurtleTerm/main/packaging/homebrew/Formula/turtle-term.rb

Preferred public Homebrew flow after the tap is published:

brew install SourceOS-Linux/tap/turtle-term

Current tap HEAD formula flow after the tap is published:

brew install --HEAD SourceOS-Linux/tap/turtle-term

Local checkout flow:

brew install --HEAD ./packaging/homebrew/Formula/turtle-term.rb

Direct release artifact installer after the first TurtleTerm release exists:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SourceOS-Linux/TurtleTerm/main/packaging/scripts/install-turtle-term.sh | bash

See docs/sourceos/INSTALL.md for full install, profile activation, and validation instructions.

Launch

turtleterm

Commands

turtle-term paths
turtle-term run -- echo hello
turtle-term office plan --title "Demo Report" --artifact-type document --format md
turtle-term /office plan --office-action convert --input ./demo.docx --to pdf
turtle-term office evidence inspect ./office-evidence.json
turtle-agentctl --stdio ping
turtle-agent-status --json
turtle-tmux panes

turtle-term is the command wrapper. turtleterm is the graphical launcher. sourceos-term remains available for SourceOS contract compatibility.

Agent reliability status

turtle-agent-status is a read-only local operator view for SourceOS Agent Reliability evidence. It scans a workspace for local .sourceos artifacts and reports whether the agent lane is ready, blocked, needs_review, or has no_artifacts.

It reads:

• .sourceos/logs/guardrail-decisions.jsonl
• StopGateArtifact files named stop-gate-artifact.json
• GuardedInvocationArtifact files named guarded-invocation-artifact.json
• SocioSphere AgentReliabilityGovernanceQueue files matching *governance-queue*.json

Human-readable mode:

turtle-agent-status --root .

JSON mode:

turtle-agent-status --root . --json

The command is read-only. It does not modify policy, memory, git state, agent state, or governance queues.

Product surfaces

• TurtleTerm graphical launcher
• TurtleTerm mux launcher
• TurtleTerm command wrapper
• TurtleTerm local agent gateway
• TurtleTerm agent CLI
• TurtleTerm agent reliability status CLI
• TurtleTerm tmux bridge
• TurtleTerm Office operator flow planning
• TurtleTerm skill manifests
• TurtleTerm turtle icon
• TurtleTerm release artifacts, manifests, SBOMs, and attestations

License and notices

TurtleTerm is MIT licensed. Required third-party notices are preserved in LICENSE.md and release artifacts.