What it does

Terax is a desktop dev workspace built on Tauri 2 and Rust, wrapped around a WebGL-accelerated xterm.js terminal. It adds a CodeMirror 6 editor with vim mode, a file explorer, source control with a real git graph, web preview panes, and an AI side-panel that runs against your own API keys or local models. The whole thing ships at roughly 7–8 MB. No account, no telemetry.

The interesting bit

The AI isn’t bolted on as a chat sidebar — it’s wired into the editor with hunk-by-hunk diff acceptance, project memory via TERAX.md, and bash execution with approval gating. Meanwhile the terminal backend uses native PTYs through portable-pty, so WSL on Windows is a first-class workspace environment rather than a wrapped subprocess hack.

Key highlights

• Native PTY backend (zsh, bash, pwsh, fish, cmd) with WebGL rendering and split panels
• BYOK AI: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, xAI, Cerebras, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, Mistral, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint; local via LM Studio, MLX, or Ollama
• Agentic workflow with planning mode, sub-agents, file read/write/edit/grep/glob, and background processes
• Git graph with lane rendering for merges, commit search, and direct links to remote commits
• Keys stored in OS keychain via keyring, never hitting disk or localStorage
• Custom themes, background images with opacity/blur, and editor themes decoupled from app theme

Caveats

• Windows builds aren’t code-signed yet, so SmartScreen will flag the installer on first launch
• Linux AppImage needs FUSE; Wayland users may need WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 to avoid rendering glitches
• .deb / .rpm packages link against system GTK and “tend to be smoother” — the AppImage is the portable but potentially cranky option

Verdict

Worth a look if you want a single lightweight app that replaces Terminal + VS Code + a separate AI client, especially if you’re already BYOK or running local models. Skip it if you need mature extension ecosystems or can’t tolerate occasional desktop-webview rough edges.