Terminal: promote to first-class workspace feature (settings, theming, font)

[spamsch]

Problem

The terminal font stack is hardcoded in terminalTheme.ts:

fontFamily: '"SFMono-Regular", "Cascadia Code", "JetBrains Mono", Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, monospace',

There is no way for users to override this without patching the source. This matters most for people running Nerd Fonts (FiraCode, JetBrains Mono NF, etc.) — which are common for tools like Starship, Oh My Zsh, or anything that renders powerline/icon glyphs. Without a matching font in the stack, those glyphs render as boxes.

Proposed fix

Add a terminalFontFamily (and while we're at it, terminalFontSize) field to the settings store, exposed as a text input in the Developer section of the Settings panel. getTerminalTheme reads from settings rather than using a hardcoded string.

Broader note

This is a good moment to ask whether the terminal should still live exclusively under Developer Mode. A configurable, polished terminal is a feature many users want as a first-class part of the workspace — not a debug tool. Worth discussing whether the terminal graduates out of the developer gate entirely, with font/size settings in a dedicated Terminal section rather than bolted onto Developer settings.

[jsgrrchg]

Simon, great point. I think it’s fair to promote the terminal to a first-class workspace feature, especially with the upcoming Claude SDK billing changes.

I initially kept it behind Developer Mode because I imagined this app being used by less technical users too. But in practice, NeverWrite is clearly a power-user app, and the terminal fits that direction.

Would you be able to take this issue? I think the clean direction would be to add configurable terminal font family and font size in Settings. While looking at this, it may also be worth checking whether the terminal should use the app’s theme tokens more fully, right now it seems to inherit the basic UI colors, but not the syntax/code token palette. We can decide during implementation whether these settings belong under Developer for now or deserve their own Terminal section.

[spamsch]

Drafted an implementation plan. High-level summary:

Step 1 — Ungate the terminal. Drop the developerModeEnabled gate from the New Terminal command and the + tab menu. developerTerminalEnabled already defaults to true, so only the outer gate needs to go. Rename the command category from Developer → Workspace while we're here.

Step 2–3 — Font and settings. Add terminalFontFamily, terminalFontSize, and a claudeCodeOptimized flag to the settings store. Expose them in a new Terminal section in Settings (not nested under Developer).

Step 4 — Font loading. Await document.fonts.load() for both normal and bold variants before terminal.open() — this is the canonical fix for xterm.js measuring the wrong cell metrics when a custom font (Nerd Font, etc.) isn't loaded yet.

Step 5 — Full ANSI palette. Wire all 16 xterm.js ITheme color slots to the app's CSS tokens so the terminal looks native to the app's theme rather than dropped in from outside.

Step 6 — Claude Code env vars. The PTY runs in a Rust sidecar (portable-pty). Extend DevTerminalCreateInput with an extra_env map, add COLORTERM=truecolor as a default, and pass CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 when the user opts in via the Terminal settings toggle. TERM=xterm-256color is already set.

Step 7 — Consolidate code. Merge features/devtools/terminal/ into features/terminal/ as a standalone rename commit.

Sequencing: 7 → 6a (Rust) → 2/5 in parallel → 6b/4/3 → tests → ungate last.

[spamsch]

First implementation is in (with the help of Claude and Opus). Not yet ready for review. Needs more tests and more manual review.

[jsgrrchg]

Great, thank you so much. The native Claude Code integration is a great addition for preparing the app for June 15th, you saved me a ton of time. I’ll give it a spin, then review everything manually and with my goblins.

Do you think it is possible to wire the Neverwrite review/change layer into the Claude Code interactive terminal? I tried thinking through a solution, but I think is not possible.