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Dormouse — Multitasking Terminal for Mice

Try it

Features

  • Automatic completion detection. Detect when an agent needs your attention with standard terminal .,mn,.mn.,mnWhen a pane goes quiet for two seconds, it's marked done. Works with builds, AI agents, scripts, anything.
  • tmux-compatible keybindings. Same prefix, same splits, same pane navigation. Muscle memory transfers.
  • Full mouse support. Click to split, drag to resize, scroll to navigate. Or stay on the keyboard.
  • Copy-paste that works. Click and drag selects text the way you'd expect, even in mouse-aware TUIs that normally swallow it as escape codes. Ctrl+C copies; killing the program is a separate gesture.
  • Sleep/wake panes. Minimize a terminal to a compact status indicator. It keeps running and you can still see whether its task finished.
  • Dual distribution. Standalone desktop app (Mac/Windows/Linux) or VS Code extension.
  • Pocket (coming soon). Tether your sessions to your phone over WebRTC — walk away, keep working.

Development

This project uses pnpm, react, typescript, vite, tailwind, storybook, and xterm.js. The standalone app is built with Tauri.

The terminal is currently hosted by node-pty, but we plan on switching to a Rust backend for the PTY.

Quickstart

pnpm install
pnpm dev:website    # vite hotreload at http://localhost:5173/playground
pnpm dev:standalone # tauri hotreload

pnpm dogfood:vscode # builds the VSCode extension and installs it into your local VSCode
pnpm dogfood:standalone           # builds and runs the standalone app
pnpm dogfood:standalone --install # installs your local build overtop of your existing system installation

pnpm storybook    # http://localhost:6006
pnpm test         # runs all tests

Folder structure

Path Description
lib/ Shared terminal library
website/ dormouse.sh (including playground)
standalone/ Tauri desktop app
vscode-ext/ VSCode extension

Agent strategy

This project was built with a combination of Claude, Codex, and Devin. Recommend running npx skills experimental_install to install the skills we are using (namely impeccable.style). See AGENTS.md for more detail.

License

FSL-1.1-MIT — Copyright 2026 DiffPlug LLC

Production dependencies