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Install Ember with Homebrew:

macOSbrew install --cask kingb/ember/ember
Linuxbrew install kingb/ember/ember

Or build from source. Ember opens to a single shell. Open a new tab with Cmd+T, and split the current pane with Cmd+D. That is the whole learning curve, the rest teaches itself as you use it.

Ember with a single shell open

Panes Added in v0.1.0

Split any pane side by side with Cmd+D or stacked with Cmd+Shift+D, or hold Ctrl+Opt and click to split by drop zone. Move focus by direction with Cmd+Arrows or just click a pane, resize by dragging the divider, and close one with Cmd+W.

Two stacked panes running commands

Tabs Added in v0.1.0

New tab with Cmd+T, jump straight to one with Cmd+1–9, or cycle with Cmd+Shift+Arrows. Drag tabs to reorder them, and double-click a tab to rename it.

The Ember tab strip with several tabs

Keyboard shortcuts Added in v0.1.0

Press Cmd+/ at any time for the full cheat sheet, grouped by panes, tabs, selection, scrollback, and shell. The sheet shows the bindings for the platform it is running on.

The Ember keyboard shortcuts overlay

Appearance Added in v0.1.0

Ember opens with a warm campfire gradient behind your shell, and can drift ember sparks over it (opt-in). Both live in Settings (Cmd+,). Set the font family and size there too Added in v0.2.0, and zoom live with Cmd+= / Cmd+− / Cmd+0.

Ember with the campfire backdrop and drifting embers

It all lives in one Settings overlay, from the font family and backdrop to shell integration and Developer Mode.

The Ember Settings overlay with the font family picker highlighted

Selection & copy Added in v0.1.0

Select with the mouse: drag for a range, double-click for a word, triple-click for a line. Copy with Cmd+C and paste with Cmd+V (bracketed, and wrapped lines copy back as one line). Scroll through history with the wheel or Shift+PgUp / Shift+PgDn.

A selected line highlighted in Ember

Clickable URLs Added in v0.2.0

Web links in terminal output are subtly underlined. At the prompt, just click one to open it in your browser. Inside mouse-driven apps like vim or tmux (which own the mouse), hold Cmd and click instead.

A URL in terminal output rendered with a subtle underline

Shell integration Added in v0.1.0

When your shell speaks iTerm2's shell-integration escape codes, Ember marks each command in the gutter with its exit status (green, red, or amber) and lets you jump between prompts with Cmd+[ / Cmd+]. It installs itself into zsh and bash with no manual setup.

Developer mode Added in v0.1.0

Ember can be driven and inspected from the outside: by a script, a CI job, or an AI agent. Turn on Developer Mode in Settings (it applies live, no restart) and the running instance listens on a private unix socket, owner-only and scoped to that instance. It is off by default and stays off unless you turn it on.

From the command line, ember-term ctl talks to the live terminal: type text, press named keys, send shortcut chords, or dump the grid state (dimensions, cursor, styles, screen text) as JSON. With one instance running it finds it automatically.

listember-term ctl list
typeember-term ctl type 'ls' && ember-term ctl key Enter
stateember-term ctl state

The same surface is exposed as an MCP server: ember-term mcp speaks the protocol over stdio, so any MCP client can drive the terminal and even capture screenshots of it. To use it from Claude Code:

mcpclaude mcp add ember -- ember-term mcp

Then ask your agent to run a command in Ember, read what is on screen, or verify the result of what it just did: a terminal it can see.