terminal
overview
Section titled “overview”spacecake includes an integrated terminal docked to the right of the editor by default. toggle it with ctrl+`, or click and drag the edge to resize. to change the dock position, use the layout switcher or right-click the terminal button in the status bar.
each workspace gets its own terminal session, started in the workspace’s root directory using your default shell. switching to a different workspace ends the current session and starts a fresh one in the new workspace.
collapsing the terminal keeps the session alive — your shell state, environment variables, and running processes are all preserved when you expand it again.
the terminal supports multiple tabs, so you can run several shell sessions side by side — for example, a dev server in one tab and Claude Code in another.
creating and closing tabs
Section titled “creating and closing tabs”- press
⌘T/ctrl+Tto open a new terminal tab, or click the + button in the terminal tab bar - press
⌘W/ctrl+Wto close the active tab (when the terminal is focused) - middle-click a tab to close it
closing the last tab hides the terminal panel. the next time you open the terminal, a fresh tab is created.
switching tabs
Section titled “switching tabs”ctrl+Tab— switch to the next tabctrl+Shift+Tab— switch to the previous tab- click any tab to switch to it directly
tab labels
Section titled “tab labels”tab labels update automatically based on what’s running in the shell. by default a new tab shows a placeholder label, then updates to show the current directory or running command. for example, if you cd into a src/ folder, the tab label changes to src. if you run pnpm dev, the label changes to pnpm dev.
these labels come from your shell’s terminal title sequence (OSC 0/2), so they work with any shell that sets the window title.
tab behavior
Section titled “tab behavior”- each tab runs its own independent shell process (PTY)
- switching tabs does not kill background processes — inactive tabs keep running
- tabs are not saved between sessions — they are created fresh each time you open spacecake
shell integration
Section titled “shell integration”editor environment variables
Section titled “editor environment variables”EDITOR and VISUAL are set to spacecake open --wait, so tools like git commit and crontab -e open files directly in the editor. the terminal waits until you close the file before returning control to the shell.
claude code
Section titled “claude code”when you run Claude Code in the terminal, spacecake automatically connects and provides file context. see claude code integration for details.
a common workflow is to keep Claude Code running in one tab while using a separate tab for your dev server or manual commands.
the terminal theme (light or dark) is locked when a tab is created. if you toggle the app theme after opening a terminal, existing tabs won’t update — press ⌘R / ctrl+R to reload the app, which restarts all terminal sessions with the new theme.
keyboard shortcuts
Section titled “keyboard shortcuts”| action | macos | windows/linux |
|---|---|---|
| toggle terminal | ctrl+` | ctrl+` |
| new tab | ⌘T | ctrl+T |
| close tab | ⌘W | ctrl+W |
| next tab | ctrl+Tab | ctrl+Tab |
| previous tab | ctrl+Shift+Tab | ctrl+Shift+Tab |