Ashy Terminal

Ashy Terminal is a modern, intuitive, and innovative terminal built with GTK4 and Adwaita. While it offers advanced features appreciated by developers and system administrators, it also stands out for making the command-line environment more accessible, helping those who are just beginning to learn how to use the terminal. Its simplified session management, built-in file manager, automatic color highlighting for improved readability, and a variety of other features bring convenience to users of all skill levels on Linux distributions such as BigLinux.

Screenshots

Key Features

🤖 AI Assistant Integration

Ashy Terminal creates a bridge between your shell and Large Language Models (LLMs), offering an optional and fully non-intrusive AI experience. The assistant only processes the content that you explicitly select and choose to send, ensuring full control over your privacy.

• Multi-Provider Support: Native integration with Groq, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, and Local LLMs (Ollama/LM Studio).
• Context Aware: The AI understands your OS and distribution context to provide accurate and relevant commands.
• Chat Panel: A dedicated side panel for persistent conversations, command suggestions, and "Click-to-Run" code snippets.
• Smart Suggestions: Ask how to perform tasks and receive ready-to-execute commands directly in the UI.

🎨 Smart Context

Aware Highlighting

Go beyond basic color schemes. Ashy Terminal applies dynamic, real-time highlighting based on both the content and the command being executed—without requiring any configuration in Bash or whatever shell you are using. All color processing happens directly inside Ashy Terminal’s interface, which is especially helpful when working on servers, containers, or restricted environments where you cannot modify files like .bashrc or .zshrc.

• Command-Specific Rules: Different highlighting rules are automatically applied when running tools such as docker, ping, lspci, ip, and more.
• Live Input Highlighting: Shell commands are colorized in real time as you type (powered by Pygments).
• Output Colorization: Automatically highlights IP addresses, UUIDs, URLs, error messages, JSON structures, and other patterns in logs.
• File Viewer: Enhances cat output with full syntax highlighting for code files.

In addition, Ashy Terminal offers a complete customization interface, allowing you to adjust:

• Text and background colors
• Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
• Blinking mode for drawing attention to critical information

This gives you a clearer, more readable view of command output—especially in environments where traditional shell customization is not possible.

📂 Advanced File Manager & Remote Editing

- **Integrated Side Panel**: Browse local and remote file systems without leaving the terminal. - **Remote Editing**: Click to edit remote files (SSH/SFTP) in your favorite local editor. Ashy watches the file and automatically uploads changes on save. - **Drag & Drop Transfer**: Upload files to remote servers simply by dragging them into the terminal window over (SFTP/Rsync) - **Transfer Manager**: Track uploads and downloads with a detailed progress manager and history.

⚡ Productivity Tools

- **Input Broadcasting**: Type commands in one terminal and execute them simultaneously across multiple selected tabs/panes. - **Quick Prompts**: One-click AI prompts for common tasks (e.g., "Explain this error", "Optimize this command").

🖥️ Core Terminal Functionality

• Session Management: Save, organize (with folders), and launch Local, SSH, and SFTP sessions.
• Flexible Layouts: Split panes horizontally and vertically; save and restore complex window layouts.
• Directory Tracking: Updates tab titles automatically based on the current working directory (OSC7 support).
• Deep Customization: Visual theme editor, font sizing, transparency (window and headerbar), and extensive keyboard shortcuts.

Dependencies

To build and run Ashy Terminal, you will need:

• Python 3.9+
• GTK4 and Adwaita 1.0+ (libadwaita)
• VTE for GTK4 (vte4 >= 0.76 recommended)
• Python Libraries:
  • PyGObject (GTK bindings)
  • cryptography (Secure password storage)
  • requests (For AI API connectivity)
  • pygments (For syntax highlighting)
  • psutil (Optional, for advanced process tracking)
  • regex (Optional, for high-performance highlighting patterns)

On an Arch/Manjaro-based system:

sudo pacman -S python python-gobject vte4 python-cryptography python-psutil python-requests python-pygments

Installation

Pre-installed on BigLinux/BigCommunity

Ashy Terminal comes pre-installed as the default terminal emulator on BigLinux and BigCommunity distributions. No installation required!

From Package (Recommended)

If a package is available for your distribution:

sudo pacman -U ashyterm-*-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

From Source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone [https://github.com/big-comm/ashyterm.git](https://github.com/big-comm/ashyterm.git)
   cd ashyterm

2. Run the application directly:

   python -m ashyterm.main

3. To build and install (Arch/Manjaro):

   makepkg -si

Usage

ashyterm [options] [directory]

Arguments

Option	Description
-w, --working-directory DIR	Set initial working directory
-e, -x, --execute COMMAND	Execute command on startup (all remaining args are included)
--close-after-execute	Close the terminal tab after the command finishes
--ssh [USER@]HOST	Immediately connect to an SSH host
--new-window	Force opening a new window instead of a tab

Examples

# Open terminal in a specific directory
ashyterm ~/projects

# Execute a command
ashyterm -e htop

# SSH connection
ashyterm --ssh [email protected]

# Execute command and close after completion
ashyterm --close-after-execute -e "ls -la"

Configuration

Configuration files are stored in ~/.config/ashyterm/:

File/Directory	Description
settings.json	General preferences, appearance, terminal behavior, shortcuts, and AI configuration
sessions.json	Saved SSH/SFTP connections and session folders
session_state.json	Window state and session restore data
layouts/	Saved window layouts (split panes configuration)
logs/	Application logs (when logging to file is enabled)
backups/	Manual encrypted backup archives

Note: Syntax highlighting rules are bundled with the application in data/highlights/ and include rules for 50+ commands (docker, git, systemctl, kubectl, and more).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature).
3. Commit your changes.
4. Push to the branch.
5. Open a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• The BigCommunity and BigLinux teams.
• Developers of GNOME, GTK, VTE, and Pygments.