Krypton

A keyboard-driven terminal emulator with a cyberpunk aesthetic, built around a multi-agent ACP harness. Built with Rust + Tauri v2 and TypeScript + xterm.js.

Single transparent native window. Multiple terminal windows rendered as DOM elements with custom chrome. Tiling layout engine. Vim-style modal keyboard system. And, at its center, a unified harness for running and coordinating several AI coding agents side by side.

The ACP Harness

The harness is Krypton's headline feature: one keyboard-driven surface that drives multiple external AI coding agents through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), so you can run, compare, and coordinate them in parallel without leaving the terminal.

Lanes — one harness, many agents

Each agent runs in its own lane with an independent session, transcript, and status:

• Claude Code · Gemini CLI · Codex · Factory Droid · Cursor Agent · JetBrains Junie · Oh My Pi (OMP)
• Per-lane model selection -- pick the model per lane from an in-harness picker; non-Claude lanes are bridged via a generated .mcp.json.
• Lane modes -- a normal coding lane, a Review lane for critiquing a diff, and a Brainstorm lane for divergent ideation.
• Per-lane resource metrics and a pinned plan-tracking panel in the right rail.

Coordination between agents

• Inter-lane peering -- lanes message each other through peer_send / peer_list MCP tools; envelopes queue in per-lane inboxes and drain on the next idle turn.
• Mention fan-out -- @mention one or more lanes to dispatch the same prompt across them.
• Soft awaiting-peer -- a lane can wait on a peer's reply without hard-blocking the composer.
• Shared memory -- lanes persist and read state across turns via the harness MCP memory server.
• Contextual lane peek & peer-activity heat -- see what neighbouring lanes are doing at a glance.

Staying in control

• Directive management -- author shared directives, preview their effect, and apply them to lanes from a directive dialog.
• Attention triage -- agents surface only genuinely hard, irreversible, or ambiguous decisions to a non-blocking human review queue (default-on), with a directive-bound grant model.
• Streaming markdown transcripts, provider-error rendering, and a readability-tuned transcript window.

Control the harness from the command line

kryptonctl is an authenticated local controller for the running Krypton instance. It can inspect harnesses and lanes, submit prompts, wait for a lane to finish, manage lane settings and permissions, and read transcripts or shared memory. It is a controller, not an ACP lane, so it cannot impersonate a lane or send peer messages.

kryptonctl acp harnesses
kryptonctl acp lanes
kryptonctl acp send Claude-1 "Review the current diff" --wait
kryptonctl --json acp transcript Claude-1
kryptonctl acp capabilities

send --wait blocks until the lane is idle and its queue is empty. Read the completed response with transcript; add --json for scripting.

Other Features

• Transparent Workspace -- Fullscreen borderless window with tiling Grid/Focus layouts.
• Modal Keyboard System -- Normal, Compositor, Resize, Move, Selection, Hint, and Command Palette modes.
• Quick File Search (Cmd+O) -- Fuzzy file picker with integrated grep mode (Tab).
• Embedded pi-agent (Leader a) -- An in-process AI coding agent alongside the external ACP lanes.
• Smart Prompt Dialog (Cmd+Shift+K) -- Global modal to dispatch prompts to active Claude sessions.
• Cyberpunk HUD -- Glowing chrome, telemetry sidebars, and reactive background animations (EEG, Matrix).
• Shader Presets -- CRT, hologram, glitch, bloom, and matrix post-processing.
• Productivity Windows -- Built-in Hurl client, Markdown viewer, Git diff viewer, and Obsidian-style Vault viewer.
• Sound Engine -- 20+ event-driven cyberpunk audio cues via rodio.
• Hot-Reloadable Config -- TOML-based configuration and theming with instant updates.

Development & Architecture

Krypton uses a Rust (Tauri v2) backend for PTY management, sound, and subprocess control, with a TypeScript (xterm.js) frontend for the UI and compositor.

npm install      # Dependencies
make dev         # Run dev environment
make build       # Build distributable bundle
make install     # Install Krypton.app and kryptonctl (macOS)

On macOS, make install installs Krypton to /Applications and kryptonctl to ~/.local/bin by default. Override the CLI destination with CLI_INSTALL_DIR=/desired/path make install.

Configuration is located at ~/.config/krypton/krypton.toml. Custom themes go in ~/.config/krypton/themes/. The authenticated loopback endpoint used by kryptonctl is enabled by default through [acp_controller].enabled.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Rust, Tauri v2, portable-pty, rodio, axum (hooks and local control API).
• Frontend: TypeScript, xterm.js, Vite, WAAPI (animations).
• AI: pi-agent-core, Agent Client Protocol (ACP).

License

MIT