toowlv1.11.25 shippedTerminal You Will Love.

toowl · pronounced /tuːl/ — like “tool”. The owl is just here for moral support.

A GPU-fast desktop terminal and a tmux-style remote client in one binary — with daemon-backed workspaces and Claude on the Perch.

Get toowl Read the docs

Free to use. macOS · Linux · Windows.

By the numbers

<80mscold start
~80MBidle memory
60fpssmooth-glide cursor
1 binaryGUI + TUI
37focused crates
16built-in themes

First feather on the Perch

Claude on the Perch.

Open the Perch (⌘B). The Claude Feather is already there — no setup, no detour through a browser.

Resume any sessionEvery Claude Code conversation in this directory shows on the Perch, one click away.
Crash recovery, built inWhen Claude goes down mid-task, the Feather detects it and offers a one-key restart. Your context survives.
Palette-integratedCmd-Shift-P opens Claude commands alongside terminal actions. One muscle memory, two superpowers.

Built on toowl's first-party toowl-plugin-agent. Shipped, tested, in this binary — bring your own claude binary and the Feather handles the rest.

The Perch, the session list, the crash banner and palette integration — all shipped in v1.0.

Breakthroughs, not bullet points

The handful of things toowl does that no other terminal puts in one binary.

GPU-fast, idle-quiet

A wgpu renderer that draws only when something changes — an <80ms cold-start target, ~80MB at rest, and a cursor that glides while it moves but costs nothing when you're reading.

Daemon-backed workspaces

Named workspaces are owned by toowld, not the window. Close the window to detach; reopen to reattach — sessions keep running. Local or remote, same UI with an @host badge.

Two clients, one binary

The same binary is a GPU desktop app on your laptop and a tmux-style crossterm client over SSH — talking to the daemon over a Unix socket, SSH-stdio, or WebSocket.

Claude on the Perch

Open the sidebar and the Claude Feather is already there: your Claude Code sessions, resumable and crash-recoverable, integrated into the command palette. No browser detour.

One daemon. Every client.

Your sessions live in the daemon, not the window.

Attach from the desktop app, a tmux-style TUI over SSH, or a browser — local or across the world, same UI. One daemon per host owns your workspaces; any client attaches over a transport.

Clients

Desktop GUI · wgpu, native chrome
TUI client · crossterm, over SSH
Browser · roost-web, scoped URL

Transport

Unix socket
SSH-stdio
WebSocket / WSS

A terminal for owls

The vocabulary

the Perch: the left sidebar surface where feathers render their views
Feather: an extension — what other tools call a plugin
the Claude Feather: first-party Claude Code integration, shipped in v1.0
Roost: daemonize a pane, or a named workspace
the Aviary: the Feather registry — soon
Hoot: banner-style notifications from feathers — planned

Install your way

Two paths, same outcome. Pick the one your environment already loves.

curl · macOS / Linux

Detects your OS and arch, downloads the matching binary, verifies the SHA256, installs to ~/.toowl/bin/toowl. About five seconds on a fresh machine.

Homebrew

Installs from toowl's Homebrew tap. Auto-updates via brew upgrade. Use this if you already manage tools with brew.

Pre-built binaries ship for Linux (x86_64 and aarch64) with every release. macOS and Windows build from source via Homebrew.