Horizon
GPU-accelerated terminal board that puts all your sessions on an infinite canvas
Install / Use
/learn @peters/HorizonQuality Score
Category
Development & EngineeringSupported Platforms
README
Why Horizon?
Tabbed terminals hide your work. Tiled terminals box you in. Horizon gives you a canvas — an infinite 2D surface where every terminal lives as a panel you can place, resize, and group however you want.
Think of it as a whiteboard for your terminal sessions with a structured workflow on top. Start with color-coded workspaces, launch preset panels, jump with Quick Nav, and fit the active workspace whenever you want a clean overview.
Highlights
<table> <tr> <td width="50%">Infinite Canvas
Pan and zoom freely across a boundless workspace surface. Place terminals anywhere. A minimap in the corner keeps you oriented — click it to jump.
</td> <td width="50%">Workspaces
Group related panels into color-coded workspaces. Auto-arrange with three layout modes — rows, columns, grid — or drag panels freely.
</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Full Terminal Emulation
24-bit color, mouse reporting, scrollback, alt-screen, and Kitty keyboard protocol. Powered by the Alacritty terminal engine — the same one behind the fastest terminal on the planet.
</td> <td>AI Agent Panels
First-class Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, and KiloCode integration. Session persistence and resume work where the underlying agent CLI supports it. A live usage dashboard tracks token spend across agents.
</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Git Integration
A built-in git status panel watches your repo in the background. See changed files, inline diffs, and hunk-level detail — no context switching.
</td> <td>Smart Detection
Ctrl+click a URL to open it. Hover a file path and click to jump to it. Horizon sees what your terminal prints and makes it interactive.
</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Remote Hosts
Ctrl+Shift+H opens a fast overlay that discovers hosts from SSH config and Tailscale. Search, filter, and connect instantly. Type user@filter to override the SSH user. Connected sessions are grouped into a Remote Sessions grid workspace.
</td> <td>Live Settings Editor
Open the config with Ctrl+Shift+, — a side panel with YAML syntax highlighting and live preview. Every change applies instantly to the canvas behind it.
</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Session Persistence
Close Horizon, come back tomorrow. Your workspaces, panel positions, scroll positions, and terminal history are restored exactly as you left them.
</td> <td>Markdown Editor
Drop a .md file onto the canvas or create one from the command palette. Split view with syntax highlighting and live preview, saved with Ctrl+Shift+S.
Install
Download (fastest)
Grab the latest release from Releases — no dependencies needed.
| Platform | Raw binary | Surge installer | |
|:---------|:-----------|:----------------|:-|
| Linux x64 | horizon-linux-x64.tar.gz | horizon-installer-linux-x64.bin | Extract and run, or use the installer for managed stable updates |
| macOS arm64 | horizon-osx-arm64.tar.gz | horizon-installer-osx-arm64.bin | Extract and run, or use the installer for managed stable updates |
| macOS x64 | horizon-osx-x64.tar.gz | horizon-installer-osx-x64.bin | Extract and run, or use the installer for managed stable updates |
| Windows x64 | horizon-windows-x64.exe | horizon-installer-win-x64.exe | Run the raw binary directly, or use the installer for managed stable updates |
Homebrew and other package-manager installs keep using the package manager's own upgrade flow. Horizon only offers the in-app update prompt for installs created by the Surge installer.
Homebrew
Stable releases are available through the peters/horizon tap on macOS and Linux x64:
brew install peters/horizon/horizon
If you prefer to add the tap explicitly first:
brew tap peters/horizon
brew install horizon
To update or remove it later:
brew upgrade horizon
brew uninstall horizon
brew untap peters/horizon
WinGet
Stable releases are submitted to the official Windows Package Manager catalog. After a release's manifest PR is approved, install, upgrade, or remove Horizon with:
winget install Peters.Horizon
winget upgrade Peters.Horizon
winget uninstall Peters.Horizon
Snap
Stable releases are also published to the Snap Store on Linux x64 as a classic snap:
sudo snap install horizon --classic
snap refresh horizon
snap remove horizon
Classic confinement is intentional. Horizon launches host shells and host tools such as ssh, git, xdg-open, pgrep, lsof, and optional tailscale helpers, so a strict sandbox would compromise core workflows.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/peters/horizon.git
cd horizon
git lfs install
git lfs pull
cargo run --release
Requires Git LFS for bundled assets and Rust 1.88+. Linux needs system headers for GPU rendering — see AGENTS.md for per-distro install commands.
Quick Tour
Keyboard Shortcuts
Most app shortcuts use Ctrl+Shift to avoid conflicts with shell programs (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+B, etc.) and OS-level bindings. Canvas zoom keeps the standard Ctrl/Cmd+0, Ctrl/Cmd+Plus, and Ctrl/Cmd+Minus bindings. They are configurable through the shortcuts: block in your config file and editable from the built-in settings panel.
Duplicate or overlapping bindings are rejected, including near-conflicts such as Ctrl+B and Ctrl+Shift+B.
| Shortcut | What it does | |:---------|:-------------| | Ctrl+Shift+K | Quick-navigate to any workspace | | Ctrl+Shift+N | New terminal panel | | Ctrl+Shift+W | Focus the active workspace at the current zoom | | Ctrl+Shift+9 | Fit the active workspace into view | | Ctrl+Shift+H | Open Remote Hosts overlay | | Ctrl+Shift+B | Toggle sidebar | | Ctrl+Shift+U | Toggle HUD | | Ctrl+Shift+M | Toggle minimap | | Ctrl+Shift+A | Align visible attached workspaces into a horizontal row | | Ctrl+Shift+, | Open settings editor | | Ctrl+0 | Reset canvas zoom to 100% | | Ctrl+Plus | Zoom canvas in | | Ctrl+Minus | Zoom canvas out | | F11 | Fullscreen the active panel | | Escape | Exit active panel fullscreen | | Ctrl+Shift+F11 | Toggle window fullscreen | | Ctrl+Shift+S | Save the active Markdown editor |
Structured Workflow
If you do not want to start by dragging panels around the canvas, use Horizon like this:
- Create a workspace from the toolbar or with Ctrl+double-click on the canvas.
- Add a terminal from your first preset with Ctrl+Shift+N.
- Jump between workspaces with Quick Nav using Ctrl+Shift+K.
- Use Ctrl+Shift+W to refocus the current workspace or Ctrl+Shift+9 to fit it into view.
- Use the workspace header controls for Rows, Cols, or Grid when you want a structured layout without leaving the canvas.
Mouse Actions
| Interaction | What it does | |:------------|:-------------| | Middle-mouse drag | Pan the canvas | | Space + Left-click drag | Pan the canvas | | Minimap click-and-drag | Jump to that area of the canvas | | Ctrl+Scroll | Zoom around the cursor | | Ctrl+Click | Open URL or file path under cursor | | Ctrl+double-click canvas | Create a new workspace | | Ctrl+double-click inside a workspace | Add a new terminal |
<sub>On macOS, substitute Cmd for Ctrl.</sub>
Configuration
The settings editor writes back to the same config file Horizon loaded. By default that is ~/.horizon/config.yaml, and config.yml is also supported when discovered or passed explicitly. You can define workspaces, panel presets, feature flags, and keyboard shortcuts:
shortcuts:
command_palette: Ctrl+Shift+K
new_terminal: Ctrl+Shift+N
focus_active_workspace: Ctrl+Shift+W
fit_active_workspace: Ctrl+Shift+9
open_remote_hosts: Ctrl+Shift+H
toggle_sidebar: Ctrl+Shift+B
toggle_hud: Ctrl+Shift+U
toggle_minimap: Ctrl+Shift+M
align_workspaces_horizontally: Ctrl+Shift+A
toggle_settings: Ctrl+Shift+Comma
zoom_reset: Ctrl+0
zoom_in: Ctrl+Plus
zoom_out: Ctrl+Minus
fullscreen_panel: F11
exit_fullscreen_panel: Escape
fullscreen_window: Ctrl+Shift+F11
save_editor: Ctrl+Shift+S
search: Ctrl+Shift+F
workspaces:
- name: Backend
cwd: ~/projects/api
panels:
- kind: shell
- kind: claude
- kind: open_code
- kind: git_changes
- name: Frontend
cwd: ~/projects/web
panels:
- kind: shell
- kind: shell
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