Next Term compared

Next Term is a native macOS terminal and code editor built for one job: running several AI coding agents side by side and showing which one is working, done or waiting on you. It is not a full IDE, so most people keep the IDE or editor they already use, for language intelligence, refactoring and debugging, and add Next Term for their agents. Compared with AI editors such as Cursor, Devin Desktop and Zed, Next Term brings no AI of its own: it runs the agent command-line tools you already have, under your own subscriptions. Compared with terminals such as iTerm2 and Ghostty, it adds a status mark for each agent, an editor with side-by-side diffs and git history, and an MCP server through which one agent runs the others. Every page below also says plainly what the other tool does better.

Every comparison

Tool	What it is	Where it is stronger	With Next Term
VS Code	A full code editor with GitHub Copilot, for Windows, macOS and Linux	Extensions, debugging, remote development, Copilot’s agents	Keep VS Code for code; run terminal agents in Next Term
JetBrains IDEs	IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, GoLand and the rest	Inspections, refactoring, debuggers, AI Assistant and Junie	The IDE for code, Next Term for agents; the IDE’s MCP server gives them its tools
PhpStorm	JetBrains’ PHP IDE	Laravel, Symfony, WordPress, Xdebug, PHP tests	PhpStorm for PHP, Next Term for the agents writing it
PyCharm	JetBrains’ Python IDE	Debugger, notebooks, Django, remote interpreters	PyCharm for Python, Next Term for the agents
Cursor	An AI editor on the VS Code codebase	Its own agents and models, cloud agents, Windows and Linux	Cursor’s agent can drive Next Term’s tabs over MCP
Devin Desktop	Cognition’s AI editor, formerly Windsurf	Local and cloud agents on one status board	Its agent can drive Next Term over MCP
Zed	An open-source editor with its own agent and Terminal Threads	Language servers, a debugger, collaboration, Linux and Windows	Zed for code; Zed’s agent can drive Next Term over MCP
iTerm2	A long-standing macOS terminal	tmux integration, triggers, a Python API, profiles	iTerm2 as the all-round terminal, Next Term for agent projects
Ghostty	A fast, GPU-rendered terminal for macOS and Linux	Speed, themes, Linux	Ghostty as the everyday terminal, Next Term for agents

What Next Term adds to any setup

Every agent in sight. Each agent gets a tab or a split pane, and each tab shows whether its agent is working, done, waiting on a decision (with the question) or failed. The status is read from the agent’s own screen for Claude Code, Codex, Command Code and Gemini CLI, and from output timing for the other agents it recognises, with nothing to configure.
Decisions come to you. When an agent asks for permission, a notification quotes the question and takes you to its tab. The Dock badge counts tabs that finished while you were away.
Any agent. Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code and 16 more are recognised by name, and anything else that runs in a terminal works too. Next Term brings no AI of its own and needs no account.
One agent can run the others. Next Term is an MCP server: an orchestrator agent can list every tab with its agent’s state, start agents in new tabs, send prompts, wait for them and read their screens, across projects.
Review next to the agents. An editor with 112 grammars, Go to File (⌘P), side-by-side diffs with per-hunk stage, unstage and revert (⌥⌘G), the Git Log and blame, Find and Replace in Files, and a project sidebar with git status and line counts, in the same window as the agents.
Agents on your servers too. A remote tab (⌥⌘T) runs an agent on a server you reach with ssh, kept running in tmux or herdr while your Mac sleeps, with the same status marks.
Pick up where an agent left off. The Welcome window lists the conversations Claude Code, Codex and Command Code kept for each project, to resume or fork in a tab.
Small and native. Swift and AppKit, a universal app, about a 16 MB download. Free and open source under the MIT licence.

Coming next Sessions from more agents: the conversations Gemini CLI, opencode, Copilot CLI and Cursor keep, in the Welcome window beside the ones it lists today.

What Next Term does not do

It is not a full IDE. No debugger, no refactoring, no language servers or code completion, no extensions. Notebooks open read-only, without a kernel.
Mac only. macOS 13 or later; there is no Windows or Linux version.
No remote development. Remote tabs run agents on your servers over ssh, but the editor and sidebar open only your Mac’s files. No dev containers, and no real-time collaboration.
No cloud agents. Agents run on your Mac, or on servers you reach with ssh, in Next Term’s tabs.
Not notarized. macOS asks you to allow the first launch of the disk image once (Open Anyway); the one-line installer does not need it.

Questions

Do I have to give up my IDE to use Next Term?

No. Next Term works next to any editor or IDE. Open the same folder in both (nxtrm . opens it in Next Term), write and debug code in your IDE, and run your agents in Next Term’s tabs.

Does Next Term include an AI model?

No. It runs the agent command-line tools you install, such as Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI, signed in the way each of them normally is. There is no account and no paid tier.

Is there a Windows or Linux version?

No. Next Term is built with AppKit, which is macOS-only. If you need the same tool on other platforms, VS Code, the JetBrains IDEs, Cursor, Devin Desktop and Zed run on Windows and Linux, and Ghostty on Linux.

Sources

Checked October 2026. Each comparison page lists the official pages, documentation and pricing pages it was checked against. Products change quickly; if something here is out of date, please open an issue.

Next Term is free and open source under the MIT licence. Made by Mishuk Adhikari. This site uses no cookies, no trackers and no third-party requests.