Terminal Board

Terminal Board arranges project and standalone terminals, files, browsers, ACP panes, VibeCast, and Vibe Lanes in a resizable grid. Terminal tiles use Ghostty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator with native macOS rendering.

Creating terminals

Click New Terminal, then choose one of these options:

Select a project to create a persistent terminal at that project’s root.
Select Custom path… and enter a directory. A path outside the open projects creates a standalone terminal.

CrispyVibe adds the terminal tile to the board where you started the action.

Splitting tiles

Add a persistent terminal alongside an existing tile in either of these ways:

Right-click a tile header and select Split Terminal.
Choose Split Terminal from Spotlight.

The new tile is added to the board window that initiated the action.

Repositioning tiles

Drag a tile header to move it within the grid. Drop zones appear as you drag:

Left or Right — place the tile beside the target.
Above or Below — place the tile above or below the target.
Swap — exchange positions with the target tile.

Resizing

Drag the dividers between columns or rows to resize tiles. Adjacent tiles adjust to fill the available space.

Use your configured shortcuts or arrow keys to move focus between tiles without reaching for the mouse.

Minimizing tiles

Minimize a tile to tuck it into the minimized tab bar, then click its chip to restore it to the board. Each chip shows the terminal’s tab title. If the tab has no title, it shows the project title, then Terminal as the final fallback. Spotlight, the rail, and tmux use the same name.

Detached board windows

Send a visible or minimized tile to another window for multi-monitor work:

Right-click the tile header or minimized chip.
Select Send to New Board Window or Send to Board Window.

The tile moves rather than being copied. If the move empties a detached source window, that window closes automatically.

Each detached window remains part of the same VibeSpace but has its own board layout, toolbar, Spotlight state, previews, and saved Tab Shelf arrangement. Settings, project switching, and Detailed view remain in the main window.

A detached board toolbar provides these actions:

New Terminal — select a project or custom directory to create a persistent terminal tile.
Open Agent — add an agent pane to that board.
Open Browser — add a browser tile.
VibeCast — add the surface’s VibeCast tile.
Vibe Lanes — add the surface’s Vibe Lanes tile.

When a project is focused, the New Terminal popover also includes Temporary Terminal. That row opens a terminal in the detached window’s Spotlight without creating a tile. If you choose Split Terminal, CrispyVibe adds a separate persistent tile to the same detached board; it does not convert the temporary process.

VibeCast and Vibe Lanes each have one tile per board surface, whether the tile is visible or minimized.

Spotlight in a detached window

Spotlight stays in the detached window where you open it. Its shelf, All Tabs overview, two-item combos, terminal compose drafts, and Up/Down recall work independently from the main window and other detached boards.

Terminal links and file targets open previews in the same detached window. Dismissing a preview or ending a temporary process returns to the nearest available local Spotlight item. See Terminal Spotlight.

Window placement

CrispyVibe saves detached window frames with the VibeSpace and reapplies them on reopen. Placement is best effort; macOS may reposition a window after your display arrangement changes.

⚠️ Note: Detached windows are board-only surfaces. They can host the supported board tiles and local Spotlight, but they do not have a separate explorer, settings interface, project switcher, or Detailed view.

See Multi-Window for bulk move, recall, rename, and close workflows.

Pinning files and browsers

Pin a file or browser from Spotlight while Terminal Board is active:

Switch to Terminal Board.
Open the file or browser in Spotlight.
Click Pin to Dock in the Spotlight header.

In Detailed view, the corresponding action is Open in Viewer, which creates a content-viewer tab instead of a board tile.

A linked Markdown file stays on the file currently shown rather than returning to the file where the preview began. Use the tile’s Back and Forward controls or Cmd+[ and Cmd+] to move through section and linked-file history. The title, folder, comments, and file actions follow the current file.

A pinned browser keeps its current page, back and forward history, page zoom, theme, and comments context. Opening the tile in Spotlight or Detailed view uses that same state, and closing Detailed view does not move the board tile back to an older page.

If CrispyVibe cannot create the tile, the Spotlight preview remains open so you can retry.

Links and paths in terminal output

CrispyVibe recognizes URLs, file paths, and directory paths in terminal output as clickable targets. Hover over a target to highlight it.

Click a target to open a popup of actions. Web links offer Open in Crispy, Open in Default Browser, and Copy Link. File paths offer Open, Open in Shelf, Open in System, Reveal in Finder, and Copy Path. Directories offer Open, Open in System, and Copy Path.
Cmd-click a target to open it directly: web links in the in-app browser, files in a Spotlight preview, and directories in Finder.

CrispyVibe treats a long URL or path that wraps across several rows as one target. Click any row to open the complete URL or path. This also works for indented output from full-screen terminal apps.

Dropping files and folders into a terminal

Drag files or folders onto any terminal to insert their paths at the cursor:

Drag one or more files or folders from Finder, or from a local project’s file explorer in the side panel.
Drop them on the terminal.

CrispyVibe shell-escapes every path, including names with spaces or special characters. It inserts paths inside the terminal’s current directory as relative paths and all other paths as absolute paths. For multiple items, CrispyVibe separates the paths with spaces. It also adds a trailing space and keeps keyboard focus in the terminal. CrispyVibe does not run the input until you press Return.

Dragging a folder row from the explorer does not expand or collapse it. A normal click still toggles the folder.

⚠️ Note: You cannot drag items from remote (SSH) project explorers into a terminal because their paths refer to the remote host, not your Mac.

Magnifying a terminal

Use a trackpad pinch to magnify a terminal up to 3× or optically shrink it to 0.5× without changing its grid:

Spread two fingers apart over a terminal to magnify it continuously.
Scroll with two fingers to pan while the terminal is above 1×. Hold Option while scrolling to send the gesture to terminal scrollback instead.
Pinch inward from above 1× to return to normal. The gesture stops at exactly 1×.
Lift your fingers, then begin a new inward pinch at 1×. After you cross the activation threshold, the terminal steps through 0.9×, 0.8×, 0.7×, 0.6×, and 0.5×.
Pinch outward while below normal to step back toward 1×. Lift your fingers and start another outward pinch to magnify above normal.

Below 1×, the fixed terminal grid remains centered with blank margins and cannot be panned. Magnifying and shrinking change only what you see: font size, rows, columns, and line wrapping stay the same. Text selection, links, and context menus remain aligned with the pointer, and CrispyVibe remembers the optical scale for each terminal session.

Glass overlay headers

CrispyVibe overlays glass headers on terminal, file, and browser panes so the content retains the full tile height. The overlays use Liquid Glass on macOS 26+ and fall back to ultraThinMaterial on earlier versions.

The split and temporary terminal buttons are in the Terminal Scroll Assist D-pad.