Download Beta
Guide contents

Overview

Getting started

Concepts

Using the app

Collaboration

Reference

Terminals: run your agents inside Merget

The left panel of the repo window doesn't have to be chat — it can be a working terminal, or a grid of up to four, each running a shell or one of your coding agents. You can drive Claude Code in one pane, watch a dev server in another, and see the history they produce on the Map beside them, all in one window.

Switching the panel to a tool

The toolbar at the top of the repo window has a button per tool, next to the Merget Agent (chat) button:

  • Terminal — a plain shell in the repo folder.
  • Cursor, Claude, Codex, Copilot — the agent CLIs.

Click a tool and the left panel becomes a terminal running it; click Merget Agent to flip back to chat. Your terminals keep running in the background while you're on chat — nothing is killed by switching.

Cursor, Claude, and Codex also exist as desktop apps, so the first time you click one of those buttons Merget asks whether you want the app (opens outside Merget) or the CLI (runs in this panel), and remembers your choice. Copilot is CLI-only. You can choose which tool buttons appear, and change your app-or-CLI preference, in Settings.

Layouts: one, two, or four panes

Layout buttons above the grid switch between a single pane, a two-pane split, and a four-pane grid. Each pane is independent:

  • Click a pane to focus it — your typing goes there.
  • The pane's title is a dropdown (in the extra panes) — use it to switch that pane to a different tool. The first pane is the one the toolbar buttons drive.
  • The × button closes a pane. The remaining panes recompact — four panes become two, two become one — and closing the last one returns the panel to chat.

The layout buttons morph the panel between one, two, and four panes; each pane runs its own tool chosen from its header dropdown; closing a pane shrinks the grid back down.

Scrollback that survives switching

The main pane keeps a separate session per tool, with generous scrollback. Run some commands in Terminal, switch to Claude Code for a while, switch back — your shell history is still on screen, exactly where you left it. The same goes for each agent's session.

If a tool isn't installed

Merget doesn't bundle or install these tools — each pane runs your copy, the one already installed on your machine. If you open a tool that isn't installed yet, the pane shows that tool's own official install command and asks whether to run it. Say yes and Merget runs it for you (nothing is installed without your approval); say no and you get a plain shell to handle it however you like.

These agents are separate products from separate companies — Merget isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any of them; it simply hosts their tools in a virtualized terminal. See Supported agents.

Why run agents here at all?

Committing doesn't care where your agent runs. The agent plugins capture your sessions the same way whether the agent is in a Merget pane, your own terminal app, or an IDE — see Your agent and Merget. The reason to run them here is simpler: everything is in one window. The agent works on the left, and the goals and steps it produces appear in the history views on the right, without window-juggling.

Under the hood

Each pane is a real terminal — a PTY running the actual tool binary installed on your machine, in your repo folder, with your shell environment. Merget hosts the terminal and keeps its output buffered so panes survive switching away and back; it doesn't reimplement or wrap the tools themselves. What you run in a Merget pane is exactly what you'd get running the same command yourself.

Next: Bookmarks · Related: Your agent and Merget · Chat · The repo view