terminal

name: terminal description: Guidance for terminal command execution, PTY sessions, and environment detection. trigger-servers: terminal

Terminal Skill

Workflow

• Always call get_environment first on a new task to understand the OS, shell, and available tools.
• Then ALWAYS call request_session_mode.
• Prefer the filesystem server's glob_files and grep_files for file discovery and file-content search.
• Do not use run_command for find, grep, rg, ag, or shell globbing unless the task genuinely needs shell-only behavior the filesystem tools cannot provide.
• Set shell="powershell" when you need PowerShell syntax and shell="bash" / shell="sh" when you need POSIX shell syntax. Leave it as auto only for straightforward native-shell commands.
• After a command fails, read the full output and exit code before retrying.

Background & PTY sessions

• Use pty=True + background=True for interactive TUI tools (vim, htop, opencode, etc.).
• Always call kill_process when done with a PTY session — do not leave sessions open.
• Use send_input after starting a background session; you do not need a separate read_output call.

Windows specifics

• Always wrap file paths in double quotes to handle spaces.
• Use forward slashes or escaped backslashes in paths.

Security

• Do not attempt to override PATH or access OS system directories — these are blocked silently.
• Obfuscated or high-risk execution patterns such as encoded PowerShell payloads, Invoke-Expression, eval, or download-to-shell pipelines are blocked.
• User approval is handled by the calling layer; do not reference it in tool arguments.