First run

Launch

Open tmnl. On macOS double-click the app or run tmnl from another terminal. On Windows and Linux, run tmnl from anywhere on your PATH.

You’ll get a single tab with your default shell ($SHELL on Unix; PowerShell on Windows). If you’ve launched tmnl before and have entries in ~/.config/tmnl/recents.toml, a welcome overlay appears with recent native-tab launches you can re-open with 1–9.

Default keys

Action	Mac	Win / Linux
New tab	⌘T	Ctrl-Shift-T
Close tab	⌘W	Ctrl-Shift-W
Next tab	⌘Shift-]	Ctrl-Tab
Previous tab	⌘Shift-[	Ctrl-Shift-Tab
AI complete the half-typed command	⌘I	Ctrl-I
NL → shell command	⌘K	Ctrl-K
Accept AI suggestion	Tab	Tab
Open settings	⌘,	Ctrl-,
Find in scrollback	⌘F	Ctrl-F

Mac chord defaults follow native conventions (⌘Z undo, ⌘X cut, ⌘C copy, etc.). All keys rebindable from Settings.

AI command completion

This is tmnl’s distinctive feature. Two modes:

Continuation (⌘I) — start typing a command, hit ⌘I, and tmnl proposes the rest as dim ghost text. Tab accepts.

$ git checkout -b feat/  ←  cursor here, press ⌘I
$ git checkout -b feat/payments-refactor   ←  ghost text appears

Natural language (⌘K) — describe what you want, hit ⌘K, get the command:

$ # find files larger than 100M not modified in 30 days  ←  press ⌘K
$ find . -type f -size +100M -mtime +30   ←  ghost text appears

Both run a quantized qwen2.5-coder model via the embedded fim-engine crate. Entirely offline — no API key, no network call, nothing leaves your machine.

Native tabs from mnml / mixr

If you have mnml or mixr installed and tmnl is running, certain commands inside them spawn a new tmnl tab rather than nesting a pseudo-terminal inside the existing app:

• :tmnl.pop-pty (from inside mnml) — transfers the focused pty pane out of mnml and into its own tmnl tab. State preserved via SCM_RIGHTS fd transfer. Unix only.
• :tmnl.open-tab <command> (from inside mnml) — opens a new tmnl tab running <command>.
• mixr.show (from inside mnml) — opens mixr as a sibling tmnl tab (instead of an embedded panel).
• mnml --blit <socket> — run mnml directly as a tmnl native client.
• mixr --blit <socket> — same for mixr.

tmnl exposes a transfer socket via the TMNL_TRANSFER_SOCKET environment variable in spawned shells. Set automatically — no config needed.

Settings

⌘, opens the in-grid settings modal — same UI convention as mnml + mixr (sectioned rows, ▸ focus, * modified marker, ←→ adjust, r reset row, R reset all, Enter save, Esc cancel). Persisted to ~/.config/tmnl/config.toml.

Common toggles: font size, window size, prompt inset, AI completion enable/disable.

Recent native-tab launches

Every time tmnl spawns a native tab (mnml + a workspace, mixr, any other blit-host app), the launch is appended to ~/.config/tmnl/recents.toml. Capped at 20 entries, de-duped, most-recent first.

On a bare launch (no --mnml, not headless), tmnl shows the welcome overlay:

Key	Action
1–9	Open that recent entry as a new native tab
↑ / ↓ / j / k	Move the selection
Enter	Open the focused entry
r	Remove focused from recents
Esc / n	Dismiss (shell mode underneath)

Headless mode

tmnl --headless

Renders to a scriptable cell grid dumped to stdout — useful for .test-style end-to-end pass/fail tests. Same App and draw path as the GUI, no window.

Next

• Read about the tmnl-protocol cell-streaming protocol if you want to write an app that renders into a tmnl tab.
• See examples/hello_client.rs for a minimal native-mode client template.
• Browse the GitHub repo for source, issues, and roadmap.