One AppKit canvas hosting every terminal pane.

A single AppKit canvas standing in for every terminal pane.

Multi-Term is a single-target Swift Package Manager executable named MultiTerminal (Package.swift:5-16). It runs multiple independent /bin/zsh --login processes as draggable, resizable panes on one AppKit NSView canvas, where each pane wraps a LocalProcessTerminalView from the SwiftTerm library, declared at a minimum of 1.12.0 and resolved to 1.13.0. Panes group into project tabs managed by an ObservableObject store, each tab carrying its own color and pane list, snapped to a 20-point position and size grid.

A file explorer sidebar tracks the working directory of whichever pane last received a click, driven by OSC 7 escape sequences emitted from a shared per-launch ZDOTDIR. A built-in code editor loads Monaco inside a WKWebView, so files opened from the explorer can be viewed and edited without leaving the app.

All application state, open tabs, panes, positions, open files, lives in memory only. Nothing survives a relaunch.

Every figure traces to a git command or a file path.

Metric	Value	Evidence
Commit count	5	git rev-list --count HEAD
First commit	2026-04-14 16:05:09+02:00	git log --reverse --date=iso-strict
Last commit	2026-04-14 17:50:32+02:00	git log --date=iso-strict
Commit span	~1h45m, single day	first/last commit timestamps
Authors	1	git log --format='%an <%ae>' | sort -u
Swift LOC	1,870 across 10 files	find Sources -name '*.swift' | xargs wc -l
Bash LOC	118	wc -l build-dist.sh
Swift files indexed	11	git ls-files '*.swift'; jcodemunch get_repo_outline
AST symbol count	282 (31 classes, 55 methods, 193 properties/constants, 3 functions)	jcodemunch get_repo_outline
Test files	0	find . -iname "*test*" (excl. .build, .git)
Published packages	0 (app, not library)	Package.swift:11-15, one .executableTarget
Direct dependency	SwiftTerm 1.12.0 declared, 1.13.0 resolved	Package.swift:7; Package.resolved
Transitive dependency	swift-argument-parser 1.7.1	Package.resolved
Git tags / releases	0	git tag
DB / SQLite files	0	find . -iname "*.db" -o -iname "*.sqlite*"
Deploy target / live URL	none, manual .pkg/.zip	README.md Installation; no CI/deploy config
Monaco language mappings	35	grep -c 'return "' MonacoEditorView.swift
File-icon mappings	50	grep -c 'return .init' FileIcons.swift
Preset pane/tab colors	12	TabStore.swift:42-47
Entitlements file	none	find . -iname "*.entitlements"
SSH / remote-terminal code	none	grep -rin "ssh|citadel" Sources/
Local build output (untracked)	.pkg 2,369,653 bytes; .zip 2,366,421 bytes	ls -la dist/, local evidence only

One canvas, two state stores, a web view for editing.

Entry point is MultiTerminalApp.swift:1-25, a @main App that forces NSApp.setActivationPolicy(.regular) on appear, because Swift Package Manager executables launch without a bundle identifier and default to a background process that would not otherwise receive key events. It wraps MainContentView.swift:3-129, a three-pane HStack of file explorer, optional code editor, and terminal canvas, divided by a draggable PaneDivider.

State splits into two ObservableObject models built in MainContentView: TabStore (Models/TabStore.swift) owns project tabs and their pane arrays, id, name, color, cwd, position, size; AppState (Models/AppState.swift) owns the files open in the built-in editor plus save and error state. Both inject as @EnvironmentObject.

The terminal layer is one AppKitTerminalCanvas (Views/TerminalPane.swift:387-402), a single NSViewRepresentable wrapping one CanvasNSView (TerminalPane.swift:339-383) that owns every pane as a plain NSView subview positioned by direct frame assignment, not a per-pane SwiftUI view. CanvasNSView.sync(with:) diffs the store's pane list against existing subviews on every SwiftUI re-render. Each pane composes a title bar, an embedded SwiftTerm LocalProcessTerminalView, and a resize strip, and implements its own mouseDown, mouseDragged, and mouseUp for drag and resize.

The file explorer (Views/FileExplorer.swift) reads the focused pane's current directory and lists contents via FileManager. The code editor (Views/MonacoEditorView.swift) is a WKWebView loading Monaco from a CDN, exchanging content with Swift through WKScriptMessageHandler and base64-encoded calls.

Nine tradeoffs visible in the code, the commits, and the docs.

Five commits, one author, under two hours.

All five commits land on 2026-04-14 between 16:05 and 17:50 local time, a single session spanning roughly 105 minutes, from one author.

Phase	Commit	Description
1	0d84a0f	The entire application in one commit: 15 files, 2,639 insertions, every Swift source file, a 520-line pre-implementation research document, and a 107-line README.
2	d9e72fa	README rewritten to its contributor-facing form; MIT LICENSE added.
3	935b303	App icon asset added and wired into build-dist.sh.
4	c26e35f	Pure README reformat.
5	c8c50e8	The only post-launch functional fix: the focus-tracking change above, plus a screenshot added to the README.

What Multi-Term is not.