Terminal

The terminal client for the ask ecosystem. ask-terminal is a thin TUI that speaks only ask-session-protocol — no runtime, no sessions, no tools of its own. The host (ask-app-server) owns all of that; the terminal just renders events and sends requests.

gem "ask-terminal"

gem install ask-terminal   # provides the `ask` command (`ask-terminal` is an alias)

One host, many clients

The same wire contract powers every client: terminal, web console, bots, IDE extensions. They can attach to the same live sessions, each receiving every event exactly once via its own delivery cursor.

Start it

Two ways to reach the host:

# Spawn a host over stdio — it also exposes a unix socket for multi-client attach
ask
#   host socket: ~/.ask-app-server/sockets/4f3a9c2b1d0e8f7a.sock

# Attach to an already-running host over its unix socket
ask --socket ~/.ask-app-server/sockets/4f3a9c2b1d0e8f7a.sock

Then type a task:

ask> fix the failing test in spec/models
› bash grep -rn "failing" spec/
  └ bash (120ms)
── turn completed ──

Any client can resolve an approval or a plan proposal by id — the terminal, the web console, or a bot all do it the same way.

Next steps

• Session Protocol — the contract the terminal speaks
• App Server — the host that runs your agent
• ask-terminal on GitHub — CLI flags and key bindings