The terminal pane on the right side of Solo is where you view and interact with the selected process. Commands, agents, and terminals all use the same full-featured terminal emulator, with live output, keyboard input, scrollback, links, and mouse support.
Commands loaded from solo.yml have one extra step: if the command isn't trusted, Solo shows the trust pane before its terminal. Agents and terminals open directly.
Viewing output
Select a command, agent, or terminal in the sidebar and its terminal becomes active in the pane. Output updates in real time while the process runs, and interactive processes accept keyboard and mouse input in the same view.
- Scrollback - when the terminal application is not using mouse reporting, scroll up with your trackpad or mouse wheel to see earlier output. Solo keeps up to 10,000 lines of terminal history for the current run, subject to an independent 10 MiB raw-output cap. When raw output crosses that cap, Solo trims the oldest output until 7.5 MiB remains.
- Follow output - when you're at the bottom of the output, new lines stay in view automatically. In the main buffer, scroll up and Solo leaves follow mode, keeping your place stable until you jump back to the bottom. An active alternate screen remains forced to follow without changing the saved main-buffer follow state.
- Clearing output - when mouse reporting is off or Text selection on owns the mouse, right-click in the terminal and choose Clear output to wipe the current buffer. The process keeps running; only the retained output is cleared.
Copying text
Select text by clicking and dragging, then press Cmd+C (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+C to copy. You can also right-click and choose Copy from the context menu. When a terminal application requests mouse reporting, switch the mouse ownership control to Text selection on before using these pointer-selection gestures.
- Double-click selects the word under the cursor.
- Triple-click selects the whole visible line (one terminal row, even when a longer line wraps).
- Keep dragging after a double- or triple-click to extend the selection a word or line at a time.
If Copy on select is enabled in Terminal settings, Solo copies a finalized selection automatically when it contains non-whitespace text.
Clicking links
Terminal output can include links from OSC 8 hyperlinks or detected plain URLs. With mouse reporting off, an OSC 8 hyperlink opens with an ordinary click. A detected plain URL requires Cmd+click or Option+click on macOS, and Alt+click on Windows and Linux, even when mouse reporting is off. While TUI controls mouse, use the same modified clicks to open a link; an unmodified click goes to the terminal application.
Solo activates http, https, mailto, file (opens the local file), and valid solo: deep links, and rejects malformed or unsafe link text. See OSC, links, and Kitty keyboard protocol for details.
Pasting
Press Cmd+V (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+V to paste into the terminal. When mouse reporting is off or Text selection on owns the mouse, you can also right-click and choose Paste.
If bracketed paste is enabled by the running terminal app, Solo wraps pasted text in bracketed paste markers. Dropped files and pasted file URLs are inserted as shell-escaped paths. For a supported clipboard image of at most 20 MiB, Solo writes a temporary file and inserts its shell-escaped path; larger clipboard images are rejected without producing a path.
Dropping files
Drag files from your file manager onto the terminal and Solo inserts their shell-escaped paths - a Drop files to paste paths overlay confirms the target while you drag.
To drop files into a different process's terminal, drag them over the sidebar instead: hover over a running process row for a moment and Solo selects it (the row highlights first), then release over the terminal. This spring-loaded selection only triggers for running processes.
Mouse support
Solo's terminal supports mouse input for applications that request it, such as vim, less, and fzf. When an application turns on mouse reporting, the mouse ownership control appears with TUI controls mouse selected by default. Clicks and wheel events go to the application in that state.
Switch to Text selection on when you need to select output, use Solo's right-click menu, activate links normally, or keep wheel gestures in Solo. When an application isn't using mouse mode, those local interactions work without the control.
Terminal rendering
Solo renders a full terminal surface inside the app and keeps process output, keyboard input, and scrollback synchronized with the selected process.
- Color rendering supports default, indexed, and true color SGR values.
- Fonts render at native resolution on Retina/HiDPI displays.
- Solo tracks cursor state, alternate screen state, bracketed paste, mouse modes, OSC links, OSC title updates, and terminal history.
How each process uses the terminal
The terminal pane works the same way across Solo, but each process type uses it a little differently:
- Commands - show the output of a managed dev server, worker, build script, or other command. You can view, copy, search, and interact with the output; keyboard input is useful when the running command accepts it.
- Agents - run interactive AI coding tools. Use the terminal to type prompts, answer questions, and review the agent's output.
- Terminals - provide a regular shell session for commands you want to run by hand.
Terminal focus
Click the terminal pane, use the footer focus control, or use the configured Focus terminal shortcut when it is enabled. Its default is Cmd+Right arrow on macOS and Ctrl+Right arrow on Windows and Linux, and it can be changed or disabled in Settings > Hotkeys. See Focus behavior and Keyboard input.