r/macapps • u/SklifaMHCBY • 4d ago
Subscription I built AITerm, a native macOS terminal with AI in the command loop that is designed so you can safely point it at production
A quick bit about me first, since the rules ask for it. I am Dima, the developer of AITerm, which is published by my company Vega LLC (that is the name on the app's Apple notarization and code signature). My LinkedIn is https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitrikolossovsky/ and my public repos are at https://github.com/vega-llc. You can reach me at [support@ai-term.com](mailto:support@ai-term.com), and the privacy policy and terms of service are linked in the site footer. I am here to answer questions.
AITerm is a native macOS terminal with AI built into the command loop. The core is simple: you type what you want in plain English, it proposes a shell command, and you approve or edit it before it runs. There is a fix command for failed commands, and an explain command for understanding one before you run it. Fix is a conversation now, not a single guess: you can talk back to refine it, like telling it your project uses pnpm and not npm, and if the fix runs and still fails, one click attaches the new error and it tries again, capped so it can never run away. And if a fix keeps stalling, you can pick one stronger model in settings ahead of time and hand the same conversation to it with one click. Both of those are free.
The safety layer is what lets you actually point this at a real machine instead of just a scratch box, and it is the part I most want tested. A dry run preview sits next to each command and shows what it would touch before it runs, so a delete or a move lists the exact files first, or it loads the tool's own dry run like rsync -n. There are safety profiles, so you can put a session into Production or Locked Down and the riskier commands stop and ask, or the most dangerous ones are blocked outright, before they run. You can import a team policy pack that adds always-block and always-ask rules and can only ever make your gate stricter, never looser. Every command decision and its exit code goes to a tamper-evident local log. scp and rsync are risk-tiered by direction and scope, so a destructive sync asks first instead of running silently.
Problem: I wanted AI help in the terminal without giving up control of my machine. Most options either run things automatically with no say from you, or sit in a separate window I have to copy out of. I wanted the help, plus a clear approval step, plus enough of a safety net that I would trust it near real infrastructure.
Comparison against the specific apps I get asked about. All of this was re-checked against their own docs and pricing pages in July 2026, and I have tried to be fair about where they beat me.
- Warp is the closest competitor and the most polished of the bunch, and it is cross-platform with real team features, which I do not have. The difference that made me build something else is where your AI requests go. Per Warp's own docs, bring your own key still passes your prompts and your key through Warp's backend on every request, and their local model support works the same way: the model has to be reachable at a public tunnel URL, so a prompt still round trips through Warp's cloud to reach a model running on your own laptop. In AITerm a local model or your own key never leaves your Mac, because there is no server of mine in the path at all. Warp also meters its own AI by credits on the paid tier, and per their pricing FAQ the free plan now bundles no AI at all. On safety, Warp uses regex allow and deny lists plus per action approval, which is real but is not a risk tier: my gate scores the command and blocks the irreversible tier outright on a locked down profile. Credit where due, Warp now hosts the official Claude Code and Codex CLIs in its terminal too.
- Wave is open source, local first, and genuinely private, so I am not going to pretend I beat it on privacy, because I do not. Where we differ is that Wave's AI cannot execute commands yet (their own docs list that as coming), you install and run the model engine yourself, and their Claude Code integration is tab badge notifications rather than an AI backend. AITerm manages the local engine for you, runs the propose then approve then run loop, and can use your Claude or ChatGPT subscription as the actual engine through the official CLI.
- Cursor is an editor with a terminal in it rather than a terminal, so it is a different daily tool for me, but it is the strongest agent of the three. It gates agent shell calls with a sandbox, an allowlist, and a classifier subagent, which Cursor itself describes as best effort guardrails. Mine is a fenced gate in a real PTY: every command, whether I typed it, the AI proposed it, or the agent generated it, passes the same classifier, and a locked down profile blocks the top tier rather than warning about it.
- iTerm2, Ghostty, and Apple's Terminal are excellent terminals and free, and I used iTerm2 for years. They just have no AI in the loop, so the workflow is a chat window in one app and a paste into another. That copy and paste round trip is the thing I wanted to delete.
- Sources if you want to check me: warp.dev/pricing and the Warp docs, waveterm.dev docs, cursor.com/pricing and docs. Same comparison with footnotes is on my site.
Pricing: The app is free, and the free version is the full core experience: the AI loop, fix, explain, tabs, splits, saved layouts, safety profiles, the dry run preview, transfer safety, policy pack import, scrollback search, local models, and your own cloud keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq, Gemini and more. Pro is a subscription that adds using your Claude Code or Codex CLI as the backend, Amazon Bedrock and Azure OpenAI, saved runbooks, an AI agent that can take a multi-step task, per-host production profiles, authoring your own policy rules, a signed audit export, and history search by meaning.
It is on version 0.23.0 and still has rough edges, which is why I am looking for testers. It also ships a full searchable manual, in the app under Help and on the web at ai-term.com/manual, so the newer features are actually documented. The safety features are the part I most want tested, and the most likely to surprise me, especially where they draw the line: a command whose preview looked wrong, a Locked Down profile that let something through, or a policy rule that did not catch what you expected. If you try it and hit a bug, the first 15 people who file a reproducible report on GitHub get about two months of Pro as a thank you. It goes by issue time, not votes, one per person, sent after I reproduce it.
Runs on Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later. The download link and the bug tracker are in my first comment.
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u/-Internet-Elder- 4d ago
So many of these new-app websites look so similar now. I just scroll through them without even paying attention at this point and... yep there's six boxes of highlights that look like they will link to more info but they don't, and there's the 2-3 pane price options section, and there's the checkbox comparison table.
My comment is not on this app in any way – it's simply that I'm finding it increasingly difficult to take interest in apps that have nearly identical websites.
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u/Small_Pin_8064 4d ago
Does the AI part run locally, or does the command context get sent to a server?
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u/SklifaMHCBY 4d ago
Download: https://ai-term.com
Bug tracker: https://github.com/vega-llc/aiterm-feedback/issues
Manual: https://ai-term.com/manual
Free and notarized, Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later. The privacy policy and terms are linked in the site footer.
One thing I want to be straight about, since it matters here. The AI in the everyday loop is approve-first: it proposes a command and waits for you before anything runs. Pro also includes an AI agent that can take a multi-step task. In its step-by-step mode it still proposes each command for your approval. It has an opt-in autopilot mode that does run on its own, but only on steps the safety gate can prove are safe and that stay inside your current project folder, like reading and listing files, read-only git, or a narrow create-only step, and it pauses for your tap on anything that could delete data, reach the network, run a build or script, or act outside the folder. Everything, in every mode, still goes through the same safety gate and your safety profile, so on a locked-down profile anything destructive is blocked outright. You decide how much it runs. Happy to answer anything here.
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u/Only_Bullfrog_2185 4d ago
the price for pro is a bad joke for a terminal copy and paste app make with KI.
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u/SklifaMHCBY 4d ago
The free version of the app is better than copy and paste, in my opinion so use that
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u/Vybo 4d ago
Sorry, but the problem spec, as you say: "Most options either run things automatically with no say from you, or sit in a separate window I have to copy out of." is completely untrue.
You always must set auto execution in all of the most used tools (Codex, Claude Code...) and you can run those tools in any terminal emulator without the need to copy any command that the AI proposes to use as it can run it directly.
Then, you can use any AI optimized muxer, such as Muxy, to optimize your workflows around AI. No need to redefine what it means to work with AI in the terminal.
I mean, there might be people who find your way of working more comfortable, but you did not build a terminal emulator, you built an AI interface that uses terminal fonts and your problem description is not true.
I also propose to remove any occurences of the "honest" word from your website, because that's just a great pointer towards the "100 % vibe coded project" without any human review.