Local-first · No telemetry · Free

One native window for every terminal, SSH, SFTP, RDP, and VNC connection you own.

KKTerm replaces the pile of clients on your taskbar — terminal, SSH, SFTP, RDP, VNC, an embedded browser, a file manager — with one workspace. Plus an AI assistant that acts on your sessions, with a human in the approval loop.

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Windows · macOS · Linux
Source available
Under 20 MB install

Real KKTerm capture · Maelstrom terminal background

Everything in one place

One window, every connection

Same app. Same window. Same hotkeys. No more alt-tabbing through a decade of separate tools.

Local terminal

PowerShell, cmd, and WSL shells, side by side.

SSH

Keys, agent, passwords, jump hosts, port forwarding.

SFTP & FTP/FTPS

Dual-pane file browser, drag to transfer.

Telnet & Serial

Ancient gear and COM-port devices, still welcome.

RDP

The real Microsoft Remote Desktop, built right in.

VNC

Rendered straight into the workspace canvas.

Embedded browser

A router's admin UI, one tab away, saved logins.

File Explorer & Document viewer

Local disk browsing plus a log/CSV/image/PDF viewer with tail-follow.

KKTerm Tab with SSH terminals, SFTP, and a web interface arranged in one grid

AI, in the loop

An assistant that commands your terminals — with you watching

Most "AI in your terminal" demos stop at chat. KKTerm's assistant works inside your session: hand it context from whatever is already on screen, and it acts on the boxes you're connected to.

Pull live terminal scrollback straight into the conversation
Screenshot a Pane and ask "why does this look wrong?"
Every risky command is flagged and waits for an explicit yes
Bring your own model — OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, Ollama, Claude Code CLI, Codex CLI, and more

KKTerm AI Assistant beside a live terminal with approval and tool controls

Your dashboard, your rules

A dashboard that doesn't pretend to be Grafana

Describe a widget in plain English and the AI assistant builds it, live, on your grid — in its own sandbox, with your approval. No marketplace, no JavaScript required.

"Add a widget showing the last 5 commits on my main repo as a list."

"Build a widget that pings my home router every 30 seconds and shows green/red."

Drag, resize, re-color. Delete one with a right-click when the magic wears off.

KKTerm Dashboard with a grid of AI-created widgets

Never lose the plot

Keep your AI agents alive across a dropped Wi-Fi

Open an SSH connection with tmux enabled, start claude or codex, close the laptop, open it again — the pane silently re-attaches. Still running. Still has its scrollback. Still in the middle of whatever it was doing.

Local PowerShell panes get the same trick on Windows through psmux, the native tmux clone.

SSH terminal Panes re-attached to named tmux sessions in KKTerm

Keep your worlds apart

Workspaces for the home lab, the day job, and that one client

Workspaces are named, isolated containers of Connections you switch between from the Activity Rail. Switching re-scopes the Connection Tree only — your open Sessions, Dashboard, and Settings stay put. Changing context costs one click, not a relaunch.

Inside a Workspace, a Tab can hold a grid of mixed Panes: SSH next to SFTP, a local shell below an RDP session, VNC beside a file browser.

A KKTerm Workspace Tab split into multiple terminal Panes

Beyond the terminal

Operate the fleet, capture the evidence

The same local workspace also covers repeatable IT work and the screenshots or recordings that explain what happened.

IT Ops

Sites, racks, tasks, and batch runs

Model rooms and racks, bind Connections to Hosts, scan endpoints, and fan out reusable tasks over SSH with saved run reports.

Screenshots

Capture, annotate, record, and trim

Grab a region, window, or full screen; organize the library; annotate images; and record silent MP4, WebM, or GIF clips with FFmpeg.

Git & Compare

Inspect history, stage changes, and compare text, folders, hex, or images without leaving the app.

Custom Modules

Install optional .kkmod tools that add isolated destinations to the Activity Rail.

Local secrets & backups

Keep durable data in SQLite, passwords in the OS keychain, and export selective or full backups.

14 interface languages

Run the full app in English, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and ten more locales.

Dress it up

26 color themes, 26 animated backgrounds

Color themes restyle the whole app chrome; animated backgrounds run behind any dashboard view or terminal pane — yes, including matrix. Both pause when you're elsewhere, so they cost roughly nothing.

KKTerm Settings showing the color scheme gallery

KKTerm background picker with animated Dashboard and terminal backgrounds

Windows only

Install Helper: a fresh box, set up without ten browser tabs

A built-in catalog that finds, installs, updates, and uninstalls the tools you'd otherwise chase by hand — Node, Python, Git, Claude Code, Codex, WSL, PowerToys, and more. UAC prompts stay explicit; nothing installs silently.

macOS and Linux already have package managers you love, so this one stays a Windows-only convenience.

KKTerm Install Helper catalog with installed and available developer tools

Honesty earns trust

What KKTerm is not

Not a cloud product

No sync, no team accounts, no SaaS tier. A "sign in to KKTerm" dialog would mean something went catastrophically wrong.

Not an autonomous agent

The assistant proposes; the human disposes. "Allow All" is a choice you make, not a default.

Not a Grafana replacement

The Dashboard is for personal control surfaces, not 10k-host observability.

Not pretending every OS is identical

Windows, macOS, and Linux builds ship, but platform-specific features stay honest about what's native and what isn't.

Why "KKTerm"?

Named after a snack that keeps servers well-behaved

Walk into a data center in Taiwan and look at the top of the racks — you'll spot a small green bag of 乖乖 (Kuāi Kuāi), a coconut-flavored corn snack from the 1960s. The name means “be good, behave.” Engineers place it on equipment as a good-luck charm: it must be green (coconut, never spicy red or curry yellow), it must be unexpired, and it must never be eaten. That bag is on duty.

KKTerm — Kuai Kuai Term — aims for the same job: sit quietly next to your important machines and help them behave. Local-first. No telemetry. Approval-gated AI. The boring, dependable kind of software.

Get KKTerm

Free. Source available. No account required.

Windows installers are currently unsigned while release signing is on the roadmap — your antivirus may give you a stern look. That's normal.

Windows

Installer + Install Helper catalog for dev tooling.

Download

macOS

Native build for Apple Silicon and Intel.

Download

Linux

AppImage / distro packages from the releases page.

Download

Prefer to build from source? Everything you need is in CONTRIBUTING.md.