toowlv1.0 shippedTerminal You Will Love.
toowl · pronounced /tuːl/ — like “tool”. The owl is just here for moral support.
A GPU-fast desktop terminal and a tmux-style remote client in one binary — with daemon-backed workspaces and Claude on the Perch.
Free to use. macOS · Linux · Windows.
By the numbers
- <80mscold start
- ~80MBidle memory
- 120fpssmooth-glide cursor
- 1 binaryGUI + TUI
- 29focused crates
- 17built-in themes
First feather on the Perch
First feather on the Perch
Claude on the Perch.
Open the Perch (⌘B). The Claude Feather is already there — no setup, no detour through a browser.
- Resume any sessionEvery Claude Code conversation in this directory shows on the Perch, one click away.
- Crash recovery, built inWhen Claude goes down mid-task, the Feather detects it and offers a one-key restart. Your context survives.
- Palette-integratedCmd-Shift-P opens Claude commands alongside terminal actions. One muscle memory, two superpowers.
Built on toowl's first-party toowl-plugin-claude. Shipped, tested, in this binary — bring your own claude binary and the Feather handles the rest.
Real UI — the Perch, the session list, the crash banner, palette integration. All in v1.0.
Breakthroughs, not bullet points
The handful of things toowl does that no other terminal puts in one binary.
GPU-fast, idle-quiet
A wgpu renderer that draws only when something changes — <80ms cold start, ~80MB at rest, and a cursor that glides at your display's refresh rate but costs nothing when you're reading.
Daemon-backed workspaces
Named workspaces are owned by toowld, not the window. Close the window to detach; reopen to reattach — sessions keep running. Local or remote, same UI with an @host badge.
Two clients, one binary
The same binary is a GPU desktop app on your laptop and a tmux-style crossterm client over SSH — talking to the daemon over a Unix socket, SSH-stdio, or WebSocket.
Claude on the Perch
Open the sidebar and the Claude Feather is already there: your Claude Code sessions, resumable and crash-recoverable, integrated into the command palette. No browser detour.
One daemon. Every client.
Your sessions live in the daemon, not the window.
Attach from the desktop app, a tmux-style TUI over SSH, or a browser — local or across the world, same UI. One daemon per host owns your workspaces; any client attaches over a transport.
Clients
- Desktop GUI · wgpu, native chrome
- TUI client · crossterm, over SSH
- Browser · roost-web, scoped URL
Transport
- Unix socket
- SSH-stdio
- WebSocket / WSS
A terminal for owls
The vocabulary
- the Perch
- the left sidebar surface where feathers render their views
- Feather
- an extension — what other tools call a plugin
- the Claude Feather
- first-party Claude Code integration, shipped in v1.0
- Roost
- daemonize a pane, or a named workspace
- the Aviary
- the Feather registry — soon
- Hoot
- banner-style notifications from feathers — planned
Install your way
Two paths, same outcome. Pick the one your environment already loves.
curl · macOS / Linux
Detects your OS and arch, downloads the matching binary, verifies the SHA256, installs to ~/.toowl/bin/toowl. About five seconds on a fresh machine.
Homebrew
Installs from toowl's Homebrew tap. Auto-updates via brew upgrade. Use this if you already manage tools with brew.
Pre-built binaries ship for Linux (x86_64 and aarch64) with every release. macOS and Windows build from source via Homebrew.
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