Terminal
Fold's terminal is libghostty — the engine from Ghostty, embedded as a library. Real TTYs, a GPU renderer, truecolor, and years of compatibility work: the terminal is the strongest part of the app on purpose.
The prompt
Every session opens on the flying-plane prompt: a dim path with the folder lit, a quiet git branch, and the paper plane riding its own gradient. History suggests as ghost text (→ accepts), the first word colours green or red as you type depending on whether it will run, and a rounded caret holds solid while you type. A failing command turns the flight red.
All of it ships inside the app. Nothing is installed on your machine, no plugins, no prompt framework — and your own zsh configuration still loads first, untouched.
Keys
The terminal keeps its own keys. Everything but ⌘-chords goes straight to the shell, because agents need their control keys.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘C / ⌘V | copy the selection, paste |
| ⌘K | clear the screen |
| ⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0 | bigger, smaller, reset text size |
Drop a file in
Drag a file onto a terminal pane and its path lands at the prompt. It comes from Finder, from the Files pane, or from any app that offers a file. A capsule sits low in the pane you are hovering, showing the file's mark and the exact line it will type.
The path is written the way you would write it: relative if the file is inside the session's own directory (src/main.swift), absolute if it is outside. Awkward names are quoted, and several files at once arrive as one space-separated line.
A drop never runs anything. The line is typed and stops there — no Return. A name carrying a line break is refused rather than quoted, because no quoting survives it. A remote pane declines the drag and macOS shows its own no-drop cursor.
A row in the Files pane is a drag source too — it lifts, dimmed in place, with a plate flying under the pointer, and it drags into any app, not only into Fold's own panes.
The fade gutter
Scroll a pane back and a thin thumb fades in at its right edge, showing where you are in the scrollback. It fades out again on its own — even while you stay scrolled back — so nothing stands over the last column at rest. Rest the pointer on it and it widens over a track; drag it to scrub.
Full-screen programs — less, vim, Claude Code — run on the alternate screen, which has no scrollback, so no gutter shows there. They scroll their own transcript; the terminal cannot know where they are. The gutter earns its keep on plain shell work: build output, test runs, long listings.
Titles
The chip in the band wears the terminal's title. Anything that sets the title — a shell prompt, an agent — is read there, and Claude Code's spinner and ✳ become Claude's mark on the chip. See Sessions.