Skip to main content
Traycer has two terminal-looking surfaces with very different roles. One is an agent using the Terminal interface; the other is a plain shell. Throughout this page, “Terminal Agent” is shorthand for an agent you interact with through the Terminal interface. It is not a separate kind of entity from the agents in the Agents panel - it is one of the two interfaces those agents can use. They can look similar because both use a terminal surface. The difference is that a Terminal Agent is still a Traycer agent, while a Terminal is just a shell.

​
Terminal Agents

A Terminal Agent runs a coding agent in a PTY, but Traycer still wraps that session with Task context. Terminal Agents can receive:
  • Traycer’s system prompt
  • the Task id and agent identity
  • artifact instructions for specs, tickets, stories, and reviews
  • guidance for creating or updating artifacts as markdown files
  • Traycer skills and planning/execution instructions
  • agent-to-agent communication instructions, and message-receiving tools when the coding agent supports them
That means a Terminal Agent is not the same as opening the coding-agent CLI yourself. Traycer prepares the session so the agent understands the Task, the artifact model, and the multi-agent environment.

​
Coding Agents That Support The Terminal Interface

The Terminal interface currently works with: This table is about which coding agents can run on the Terminal interface. It is a different question from which of them can receive agent-to-agent messages - see Agent-to-Agent. For the full interface compatibility matrix, see Agents & Models.

​
Plain Terminals

A Terminal is a shell session. Use it to run commands yourself: package scripts, tests, dev servers, logs, local debugging, or one-off shell work. A plain Terminal does not receive Traycer’s agent prompt, does not use Traycer skills, does not create artifacts by itself, and does not participate in agent-to-agent communication. It is still part of the Task, but it is not an agent session.

​
Launch Setup

When you create an agent on the Terminal interface, you choose its launch setup:
  • workspace folder or worktree
  • coding agent
  • model, when supported
  • thinking effort, when supported
  • Terminal interface CLI arguments, when supplied
Those choices stay fixed after launch. Start a new Terminal Agent when you need a different workspace folder, worktree, coding agent, model, thinking effort, or argument set. Worktree choices are covered in Worktrees. Traycer also keeps the upstream coding-agent session id for the Terminal Agent. When the app or Host restarts and the same Terminal Agent is reopened on its original Host, Traycer resumes the underlying coding-agent session instead of starting from scratch. Plain Terminals do not have a coding agent, model, thinking effort, or artifact behavior. They only need the shell/workspace context used to start the terminal.

​
Agent-To-Agent Communication

Referencing an agent, reading its transcript, and sending it a message are separate capabilities with separate requirements.
  • Every Terminal Agent is referenceable by @ mention, with no further conditions.
  • A Terminal Agent’s transcript is readable by the same user, on the Host that owns that agent. Traycer reads it from the coding agent’s own session history rather than terminal scrollback, so the record survives the terminal closing - but reading it still needs the owning Host to be reachable and that provider history to still exist.
  • Only Claude Code Terminal Agents have an inbox for agent-to-agent messages. Codex and OpenCode Terminal Agents run terminal-style work and can be referenced and read, but a message has nowhere to be delivered.
  • Delivery additionally requires the same user and that both the sending and receiving agent are local to the same Host, whatever the coding agent - see Hosts.
Every Terminal Agent appears in the Task’s agent hierarchy either way, so you can always see where delegated terminal work came from. The coordination model is covered in Agent-to-Agent. Multi-agent defaults are configured in Settings > Agent selection. Supported coding agents are listed in Agents & Models. If you are looking for a terminal-style coding agent, create an agent on the Terminal interface from the Agents panel. If you are looking for a shell you operate yourself, use Terminals.