Zerminal: a Zed fork designed as a terminal-first workspace for AI coding agents

A developer built Zerminal by forking Zed and replacing its built-in AI agent approach with one that detects coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Aider, and similar tools) and runs them in their native terminal UI, positioning the terminal as the center with editor, context pane, file browser, and git UI nearby.

The project emerged from earlier work on Brosh, an Electron app around the same terminal-first idea; the developer moved to Zed for its speed, polish, and native feel, then adapted it into a workspace for both simple terminal use and coding-agent workflows.

The creator uses Zerminal as a simple terminal, a coding-agent workspace, and sometimes as a full IDE (integrated development environment).