A terminal where every command remembers its context, and the things you reach for next — the preview, the files, the diff — are already there.
Grove is a macOS dev environment built around a single idea: most of what you do after running a command is predictable. You check what changed. You look at a file. You hit the dev server. Grove puts all of that one panel away, and makes the terminal itself remember enough about each command that the answer is usually already on screen.
Status: pre-alpha, macOS only. The pieces below marked ✅ work today. The ones marked 🚧 are the next milestones — see Roadmap.
A normal day in a normal terminal:
$ npm run dev → open browser, navigate to localhost:5173
$ git status → squint at output, mentally diff
$ vim src/App.tsx:42 → context switch to editor
In Grove that's one window. Click the URL in npm run dev output → Browser panel opens it. Click src/App.tsx:42 in a stack trace → Files panel jumps there. Diff panel is already showing what you've changed.
Every command is its own block. Every block knows:
- Exit code, duration, exact cwd at run time
- Live env at that moment: node version, git branch, virtualenv, AWS profile
- OSC 133 + custom
grove-pre/grove-post/grove-envmarkers — no polling - Per-block menu: rerun, copy, delete
Blocks persist to ~/.grove/blocks/{tabId}.json and survive restarts. Shell integration is wired via custom ZDOTDIR so your aliases and rc still load.
Drag tabs between named workspaces. Each workspace pins its own working directory. No more re-cd, no tmux gymnastics for parallel work.
Mutually exclusive, ~40% of content width, toggled per tab.
- Files — virtualized browser,
git ls-filesaware in repos with a guarded walk fallback, search, file preview - Diff — live
git diffof the current cwd, the view you'd see in PR review - Browser — iframe-based today, discovers dev servers via
lsof, stripsX-Frame-Options/frame-ancestorsfor localhost, supports a 1280-min desktop viewport (scale-to-fit) or a 390 mobile frame. Per-workspace recents. Chrome-style "site can't be reached" page on connection failure.
Paths (src/App.tsx:10:5), OSC 8 hyperlinks, and http(s) URLs in command output are all clickable. URLs open in the Browser panel; paths open in Files. ⌘-click from anywhere works.
Backend pushes context changes over WebSocket (debounced) instead of clients polling. The chips on each block update live as you cd, switch branches, or change node versions.
These are what Grove is becoming. Not in the box yet — listed roughly in priority order.
The Browser panel is a real Electron WebContentsView, not an iframe. That means:
- Any cross-origin site, not just localhost — no header stripping needed
- WebAuthn / security keys for 2FA on staging and prod
- Persistent cookies and login state across sessions
- Real
setZoomFactorfor viewport scaling instead of CSS transforms
Chrome-extension support (1Password, etc.) via electron-chrome-extensions is the next layer; the substrate is in.
Right-click a workspace → Fork workspace (or + → Fork workspace…). Grove runs git worktree add under the hood, drops a sibling row right below the source, and gives it a memorable animal-hash name like otter-a3f2. Forks are ephemeral by design — close one and the worktree directory + the grove/<animal>-<hash> branch are cleaned up together. Use it for: hotfixes off main without disturbing in-progress work, PR reviews without context-switching, throwaway experiments.
Stale grove/* branches surface in Settings → Clean up Grove branches; orphan worktree directories from earlier crashes are detected and removable from the same panel.
⚙ in the titlebar. Pick a mono font family (Hack, JetBrains Mono, SF Mono, …), tune size live (xterm updates without restart), and clean up orphan grove/* branches.
Each new tab launches into a Claude Code agentic session by default, with full repo context and your shell aliases preserved. Drop to raw zsh with ⌘\ when you need it. Sessions persist per worktree under ~/.grove/sessions/<branch>.jsonl.
This is the bet that makes Grove different from "Warp but open-source." Whether it stays the default vs. an opt-in mode is still TBD.
Right-click a block → Ask Claude. Ships the full context — command, output, exit code, cwd, branch, env — in one shot. No more copy-paste-into-chat-window.
A block already has everything needed to reproduce it. One-click "share" produces a snippet a teammate can paste back, or a bug-report-quality dump.
- Electron shell — custom titlebar, IPC for folder picker, open external, frame nav forwarding
- React 18 + Chakra v3 + Vite + Zustand (persisted to localStorage)
- Fastify + WebSocket + node-pty backend on
127.0.0.1:4317— runs as a persistent daemon (see below) so dev servers and watchers survive window close - xterm.js for raw-mode TUI overlay (vim, htop, ssh, claude…)
lsoffor dev server discovery- Custom zsh integration via
ZDOTDIRfor OSC 133 + Grove markers - Disk-persisted block history at
~/.grove/blocks/{tabId}.json
npm install
npm run dev:alldev:all builds the Electron main process, then runs backend + Vite + Electron in parallel. A kill-ports step nukes any stale listeners on 4318 and 5173 first so restarts don't conflict. The dev backend listens on 4318 to stay clear of any packaged Grove daemon on 4317.
A packaged Grove runs the backend as a detached daemon at 127.0.0.1:4317. Closing the window leaves it alive — your npm run dev, test watchers, and long compiles keep going. Reopen Grove and Electron reconnects to the same process. ⌘Q (Quit Grove) tears the daemon down cleanly; force-quit or crashes leave it running, and the next launch reconnects.
Manage it from the CLI when needed:
npm run daemon:status # is it running?
npm run daemon:stop # SIGTERM + clean PID file
npm run daemon:start # build backend, start freshState lives in ~/.grove/: daemon.pid, daemon.log, blocks/, worktrees/.
See FEATURES.md for the v1 scope.
Pre-alpha. macOS only. Built in the open. If something breaks, open an issue — once the Ask Claude action lands, Grove will help you write that issue.