horizon

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Why Horizon?

Tabbed terminals hide your work. Tiled terminals box you in. Horizon gives you a canvas — an infinite 2D surface where every terminal, agent, browser, and editor lives as a panel you can place, resize, and group.

Think of it as a whiteboard for live sessions, with a structured workflow on top: color-coded workspaces, preset panels, a command palette, and fit-to-workspace whenever you want a clean overview.

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The model

Horizon has five nouns. Everything else is a shortcut, a preset, or a panel kind.

Noun	What it is	How you use it
Canvas	The infinite 2D surface	Drag empty canvas or swipe with two fingers to pan. Pinch or Ctrl+scroll to zoom. Minimap to jump.
Workspace	A color-coded cluster with a shared working directory	Ctrl+double-click the canvas and pick a preset, or click New in the sidebar. Arrange with Default (free), Rows, Cols, or Grid. Detach it to its own window.
Panel	One live surface inside a workspace	Shell, SSH, coding agent, browser, markdown, git, or usage.
Preset	A named template for a new panel	Command palette, Ctrl+double-click, or Ctrl+Shift+N (first preset).
Session	A saved board	Close Horizon and come back. Ctrl+Shift+J switches between saved boards.

A typical board looks like this:

Session
└── Canvas
    ├── Workspace "Backend"     cwd: ~/projects/api
    │     ├── Shell
    │     ├── Grok
    │     ├── Browser  →  http://127.0.0.1:3000
    │     └── Git Changes
    └── Workspace "Frontend"    cwd: ~/projects/web
          ├── Shell
          └── Claude

Workspaces stay visible. There are no hidden tabs. If something is off-screen, pan, zoom, fit, or search — do not hunt through a tab strip.

Panel kinds

Kind	What you get
shell	Login shell in the workspace directory
ssh	Remote shell — usually from the Remote Hosts overlay
grok · claude · codex · open_code · gemini · kilo_code · pi	First-class coding-agent TUIs, with session resume where the CLI supports it
browser	Live Chromium, Firefox, or Safari on the canvas, shared with agents
editor	Markdown split view (syntax + preview)
git_changes	Changed files, diffs, and hunks for the workspace repo
usage	Token spend across agent panels
command	Run an arbitrary command as a panel

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Five minutes on the canvas

You do not need a config file to start. Launch Horizon, then:

1. Ctrl+double-click empty canvas. A preset list appears. Pick Shell (or Grok, Claude, Browser, …). Shell and agent presets then ask for a working directory — that becomes the workspace cwd, and the first panel lands there.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+N for another panel of the first preset (Shell by default), or Ctrl+Shift+K and type a preset alias (gb, cc, web, gc).
3. On the workspace header, click Rows, Cols, or Grid when you want structure, or Default to drag freely.
4. Press Ctrl+Shift+9 to fit the workspace into view. Press Ctrl+Shift+W to jump back to it without changing zoom.
5. Press Ctrl+Shift+K again. Type a workspace name, a panel title, @ for panels only, or > for presets and actions.
6. Close Horizon. Reopen it tomorrow — the session, layout, canvas pan/zoom, and terminal history are still there.

Once that loop is familiar, the rest is optional: New in the sidebar for an empty workspace, Ctrl+Shift+H for SSH/Tailscale hosts, the workspace Detach control for a dedicated window, a Browser panel for a live page, or Settings (Ctrl+Shift+,) to edit ~/.horizon/config.yaml with the canvas still visible behind it.

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Highlights

Infinite Canvas

Pan and zoom freely. Place panels anywhere. A minimap in the corner keeps you oriented — click or drag it to jump.

Workspaces

Group related panels into color-coded workspaces. Auto-arrange with rows, columns, or grid — or drag freely. Detach a workspace into its own OS window.

Full Terminal Emulation

24-bit color, mouse reporting, scrollback, alt-screen, and Kitty keyboard protocol. Powered by the Alacritty terminal engine. Click a TUI (Grok, vim, less, …) and the click goes to the app; Shift+click still selects text.

Command Palette

Ctrl+Shift+K searches workspaces, panels, presets, and actions. Prefix > for presets and actions, @ for panels only. Selecting a panel pans the canvas to it.

AI Agent Panels

First-class Grok, Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, KiloCode, and Pi integration. Session persistence and resume work where the CLI supports it. Title bars show a working indicator and, when a session is bound, its id. A live usage dashboard tracks token spend.

Live Browser

Run Chromium, Firefox, or Safari automation on the canvas. You and an agent share the same live page — navigate, inspect, click, fill, capture network traffic, then hand control back and forth.

Git Integration

A built-in git status panel watches the workspace repo. See changed files, inline diffs, and hunk-level detail without leaving the canvas.

Smart Detection

Click an OSC 8 hyperlink to open it. Ctrl+click a URL or file path under the cursor. Horizon sees what the terminal prints and makes it interactive.

Remote Hosts

Ctrl+Shift+H discovers hosts from SSH config and Tailscale. Search, filter, and connect. Type user@filter to override the SSH user. Connected sessions land in a Remote Sessions grid workspace.

Live Settings Editor

Ctrl+Shift+, opens the config as a side panel with YAML highlighting and live preview. Toggle light / dark / auto themes; changes apply to the canvas behind the editor.

Session Persistence

Close Horizon, come back tomorrow. Sessions, panel layouts, canvas pan/zoom, and terminal history restore as you left them. Ctrl+Shift+J switches boards. An opt-in setting can line attached workspaces into a horizontal row in sidebar order after restore.

Markdown Editor

Drop a .md file onto the canvas or create one from the palette. Split view with syntax highlighting and live preview, saved with Ctrl+Shift+S.

Speech Input

Opt-in, on-device dictation into terminals and browser pages. Hold a push-to-talk key (default F9) or use the title-bar mic. Nothing leaves the machine.

Audited Browser Automation

Agents discover one MCP browser contract automatically. Every action is correlated in a redacted audit trail. The horizon-browser CLI runs prompt jobs and repeatable JSON plans.

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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-ui --classic
snap refresh horizon-ui
snap remove horizon-ui

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 1.95+. Linux needs system headers for GPU rendering — see AGENTS.md for per-distro install commands.

The build checks required embedded fonts and stops if one is missing or still a Git LFS pointer. Run git lfs install and git lfs pull from the repository root, then rebuild. If a font is still missing, restore it from a complete checkout with LFS assets; source archives must also contain the hydrated fonts.

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Keyboard and mouse

Most app shortcuts use Ctrl+Shift so they do not steal shell chords (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+B, …) or OS bindings. Canvas zoom keeps Ctrl/Cmd+0, Ctrl/Cmd+Plus, and Ctrl/Cmd+Minus. Bindings live in the shortcuts: block and in Settings. Duplicate or overlapping bindings are rejected, including near-conflicts such as Ctrl+B and Ctrl+Shift+B.

Shortcut	What it does