YOLTERM

YOLTERM is a modern developer terminal for Windows, planned to combine terminal functionality, filesystem navigation, custom commands, Git/npm tooling, drag-and-drop folder navigation, and a custom user interface.

Current status

The current foundation includes a stabilized command routing layer and native filesystem commands: pwd, cd, ls, mkdir, and tree. These commands use Python filesystem APIs and maintain YOLTERM's own explicit session directory, independent of the Python process working directory. The terminal UI separates a read-only output panel from a dedicated editable command input, with session-only history and a single YOLTERM-owned prompt. The application now uses a custom synthwave/neon window with a branded title bar, dynamically generated pyfiglet ASCII logo, animated gradient rendering, welcome area, status header, and custom window controls. Visual components live under src/yolterm/ui, separately from terminal process and command logic. Shell startup banners and prompts are hidden so YOLTERM controls the visible prompt. Other commands continue to run through the asynchronous shell session. On Windows the initial backend is cmd.exe; non-Windows development environments use an interactive system shell for testing. PowerShell integration, Git/npm tooling, and drag-and-drop are not implemented yet.

Requirements

• Python 3.12 or newer
• Git

Setup

Create a virtual environment from the project root:

python -m venv .venv

Activate it on Windows PowerShell:

.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Activate it on Windows Command Prompt:

.venv\Scripts\activate.bat

Activate it on macOS or Linux:

source .venv/bin/activate

Install the project and its dependencies:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install -e .

Run

With the virtual environment activated:

python -m yolterm

Type a shell command and press Enter. Native filesystem commands include pwd, cd, ls, mkdir, and tree; other commands are sent to the underlying shell. Basic history navigation, cursor editing, selection, copy/paste, Ctrl+C interruption, and Ctrl+L clearing are supported.

Development

The application source is under src/yolterm, and tests are under tests. The project intentionally has no third-party dependencies beyond PySide6 at this stage.