This 100% open-source terminal is insane… just watch

This is CMAX, a new terminal designed to run multiple AI agents in parallel, and it's pretty insane. In this video, I'm going to show you what CMAX is, how to use it, how it differs from T-Max, and how I'm actually utilizing it in my day-to-day workflow. And this might be the best terminal I've ever used. But don't take my word for it. This is Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, saying that CMAX is great and that he uses it for all of his coding. So, what is CMAX? Well, it's a terminal. It's a Mac OS terminal that's designed for Agentic Engineering. And it's built on top of Ghosty. That's a popular terminal as well, but more specifically, it's built on lip Ghosty. This is the core engine that powers Ghosty. And it's the part that draws text on screen quickly using the GPU and handles all kinds of different terminal behavior. So, what the developers behind CMAX did is that they built on top of lip coasty. So, all of this terminal rendering, all of this hard stuff, they didn't reinvent the wheel. Instead, they added a nice sidebar, another sidebar, the ability to split horizontally, the ability to split vertically, the right sidebar, multiple different workspaces, integrated browsers inside of the terminal, and so much more. And don't worry, I'm going to show you all of that later in the video. Now, what makes CMAX so damn fast is that it's a native Mac OS app. It's built in Swift. It's not Electron app. It's super fast. I mean, might be the fastest terminal I've ever used. And this makes it just a pleasure to use. Oh, and it also works with any CLI agent. So whether that's Cloud Code, whether that is Codex, whether that is PI agent or whether that is Hermes agent, all of them are supported by CMAX. And by the way, all of the resources, terminal commands, everything I referenced in this video is available as the first link below video as a bundle. So if you want it, go get it now. It's completely free. Now, the beauty of CMAX is that it's also fully open source, right? So you can fork it, you can check the source code, but the easiest way to download it is to go to cmax.com and simply click on the download button right here. And this is perhaps the biggest misconception I must destroy. Now you don't have to be a developer. In fact, if you aren't technical, you definitely should be using CMAX because it makes using terminal a lot simpler, a lot easier, a lot nicer than the default Mac OS terminal, which is very clunky and uh not really helpful. It's very intimidating. It's just empty and it doesn't make your life easier in any way. So when you install CMAX, just open it by typing CMAX as any other app. And there it is. This is CMAX. So it doesn't look like this. First of all, when you first open it, it looks like this. Okay. So you have literally a single pane with the command CX welcome, which by the way, anytime you want to see this, just type in Cmax welcome and it will show you the main keyboard shortcuts in a single location. Right? So all of these are very important. I would recommend learning all of them. But don't worry, we're going to go through them one by one. So, first thing you need to understand is on the left we have the workspaces, right? And if you don't see the sidebar, do command B. Command B to open the primary sidebar. You might notice that on the right I also have a secondary sidebar. That's command option B. But we don't need this one for now. I'm going to keep it simple for you. Okay. If you see me zooming in and zooming out, that's with command minus and command plus. The beauty of Cmax though is that it's independent, right? So, if we have different ones, so I'm going to do CX welcome in a different one. You can see that the zoom is separate for each terminal. This is huge. This is like such a huge quality of life. I cannot even explain how many times I wanted this when running multiple cloth codes or multiple multiple codexes and one of them I just want to zoom in and zoom out. It doesn't affect the other one. So that's amazing. Right now you might be saying like, "Okay, David, how did you do that? How did you do this split, this horizontal split or this vertical split, right? This, if you've seen my video on T-max, you probably like the fact that it's the terminal multiplexer, right? can run multiple terminals at once in a nice grid. CMAX obviously has the same and it's even more intuitive. In fact, the issue inside of T-Max is that it needs command B and D. It's a bit clunky. It's like since 2007, right? So, it's 19y old technology. Cmax is way newer and these keyboard shortcuts are way more intuitive, right? So, again, as you can see, the split to write is just command D. Boom. Just like that, you split your screen in 50/50 and it launches a new terminal. So if you want to quickly launch close code, you can do that very effortlessly. Now if you want to split vertically, you can do command shift D. Boom, there it is. So here I can do like ping 1111 and it's going to run here. And then we can resize very easily by dragging on these lines in between. Right? So whatever layout you want to do, if it's a simple project, maybe you only need two agents, three agents. If it's something more advanced, maybe you want a 2x3 grid of six different agents, right? It's entirely up to you. And what's even better is that the agents themselves can use CMAX to build these grids and to interact with these PES for you. Right? So again, I'm I don't want to get too ahead of myself. As you can see, I'm very excited about this tool. And by the way, no, this is not a sponsored video. It's open source project and I just found it on Twitter. I like it and I use it. So that's why I'm making a video about it. Now, one thing you might notice is that the highlighting is also very clean, right? Whatever pane I click in, you can see that it's immediately highlighted. Now, if it's an agent, so for example, here it's cloud code. I'm going to do high. I'm going to click away. You'll see that it becomes highlighted the moment it finishes, right? Boom. This blue outline, this is not edited in. This is default inside of CMAX. So, it really is the terminal for AI agents. All of this convenience, all these things is built around the idea that you're going to be using AI agents and you're going to be running multiple of them at the same time. And maybe you're in a completely different workspace. And then on the left, you can see the main sidebar. Okay. Okay, the Cmax welcome one wants my attention and you can see that clo is idle and obviously we don't want our agents to be idle. We want them to be running. Okay, so the three things you must understand about CMAX are workspaces, paints and services. So let me just jump into Cmax to show this. Right, workspaces are the things on the left. You can do a new one by clicking plus or if you read the CMAX welcome you can do command N to launch a new workspace. This is an entirely separate workspace. I mean this is like an entirely separate project basically right so as you can see I have one about my personal tasks one about the Cmax video one about global one about developing our internal software one about onslaught fine-tuning so this is just separate stuff right separate stuff you're doing in your life separate types of use cases types of work different workspaces for different work okay but then the second concept you must understand is pain this is the split section inside of workspace so for example in this CMAX video workspace we have four different PES, right? You have the cloth code, the codeex, the pi, and the Hermes. But inside of the CMAX welcome workspace, right? So, this is a different workspace. We have only two panes as you can see. And I can do command W to kill this one. And now we have only one pane. The third concept you should understand is surface. This is a tab inside of a pane, right? So maybe you know you have a couple of panes like this classic 2x two grid. But then a different surface can be either a terminal or you can click here and it's a browser, right? So we can literally go to youtube.com/david Andre. Boom. And this is a integrated browser inside of Cmax terminal which if you put two and two together this is absolutely huge for developing because the agents can use this browser to debug your app right and again this is a different surface. So workspaces, PES and surfaces are the three terms you should understand about CMAX. Now, one of the main things, one of the most beautiful things about CMAX is the notifications, right? This sounds like another big deal because most apps have pretty notification systems, but inside of CMAX, this is different. For example, I can ask cloud code list out all skills you have. Then I can go into a different uh workspace. So, back here, Cmax, welcome. I can do some work here, you know, whatever. And then watch on the left, right? You can see running. You can see the agent is running and it's clear what's happening in each workspace. Right? Boom. Now I got a small sound. I got the one here and there's a beautiful keyboard shortcut which is this one. Command shiftu. Jump to latest unread. So what if it's the latest agent that finished running? You can do command shiftu and it jumps straight into that one. So not only did it switch the workspace, it also focused into this cloth code because it's the latest agent that finished running. The notification system is in CMAX is so clean and it really will boost your productivity. This is why I'm telling you guys stop using the default terminal in Mac OS. Like there's literally no reason to use it. Cmax is open source. CMAX is free and it's so easy to learn. Like so far everything I showed you, you don't have to be a developer at all. Like this is literally so easy to use, so intuitive that I wish all of you actually install it. Don't just be a watcher. Don't just be somebody who endlessly consumes content. Start being a creator. Start being an action taker. Setting this up on your MacBook requires like couple minutes. Literally two to three minutes. It's completely free. It's open source. And uh it's a no-brainer. So yeah, stop running cloth code inside of the cloud desktop app. God forbid. Stop running it inside of the default terminal. Just use CMAX. It's like a combination. It's basically a combination of t-max terminal multiplexer and VS code because again you have this second sidebar which you know again it's command option B. So when we are for example here inside of the CMAX video we can see that it's empty but if you let's say I do Ctrl + C to kill this cloud code I do clear and I do CD one level up you can see that it changed because we're in a different directory and we can see that all these different folders in this directory very clearly. So if I cd into CMAX again it changes and it's so fast. It's so fast. So this is the easiest way to understand it. It's something between an IDE and a default terminal and T-Max. It's just a combination of these into a single app that feels very clean and very native to use and it feels like the most elegant solution we have right now for running multiplayer agents in parallel. So this is why I'm so excited about it. Now, here's where things go to the next level because you can use these agents such as cloud code, pi, codex inside of cmax to operate CMAX itself. Let me just show you because I think it's going to be simpler if I demonstrate it rather than talking about it. So, I'm going to launch pi and I'm going to tell it find the CMAX skill and read it. By the way, I built a skill for myself which tells the agents everything they need to know about CMAX CLI, how to operate with it, literally everything, right? And by the way, this is going to be included inside of the bundle. So if you want that skill, click the link below the video, the first link, and just grab it. It's completely free. Now, as you can see, it read this skill, CMAX, and it has complete knowledge of what CAMAX is and how it works and how to operate with it. So I'm going to say, good. Now split the current CMAX workspace into a clean 2x two grid. Okay. So, inside of this workspace, we only have one pane, which is this pi um window, but I want a 2x2 grid. So, guys, hands off. It's pi doing it. Look at this. It's launching the terminals. Okay, let's see if it spot. It made a mistake. Let's see if it fixes that mistake because it did one on the side and then three in a single column. So, it needs to figure that out. Okay, it closed it back to single full pane. Yes. Uh, it's still making a mistake, but it knows it because it can operate CMAX and it can make adjustments and there it is 2x two grid very clean all done by PI agent. So I can say good job now launch cloth dangerously skip permissions in the other three empty panes so we can have it operate our agents and manage CMAX. Right? So let's see the PI agent is basically like an orchestrator. It has perfect knowledge of what CMAX is and the state of the workspace. And there it is. It launched the CL codes. I'm going to say click yes in all of them. So this is obviously still very surface level, but we can have each of them build a different thing. There it is. Nice. So it launched all of them. I say good. Now give each of them a different onepage HTML web app to build and tell cloud code to launch it using the CMAX web browser when it's finished. So literally you as a human will talk to one agent right whatever agent you prefer could be Hermes agent could be pi like I'm doing right now could be cloud code could be codex could be agent zero whatever you prefer and that agent will be kind of orchestrator and look at this right so it sent a prompt to all of these with instructions what to build and then what to do when it's finished and now we can just talk to the pi and the pi can control these other cloud codes right so literally it's like you as the CEO you'll be the CEO of your own have and you'll be talking to a single agent which knows you well and which you know well right so I'm using a pi with cloth opus 4.8 eight because obviously that's the latest model and there it is. These apps are already finished. So nice. We have these PES and we can see that the notification is is highlighted on the latest one that's finished, right? And we have these different apps and it's launching them kind of in a chaotic way. Make sure the browsers are in the correct PES. So we can have Pi fix that, right? because it it's kind of ugly and u the cloth codes launched it in the main pane but they should be in their own. I think uh I can figure that out. Nice. Super clean. Super clean. Okay. So, obviously these are not like crazy builds or anything, but the point is that we have three different cloth codes right here. Each of them built a different app and everything is running inside of CMAX and all I need to do is just talk to a single main agent which I chose to be PI agent because I don't know Pi is clean, it's fast, um I like it. I'm running Opus 4.8 fast which by the way you need to switch to 4.8. Now the reason I'm saying you need to switch to OP 4.8 fast is because it's only only two times more expensive than Opus 4.8 normal. Right? So if you look at the pricing Opus 4.8 8 is 5 and 25. If you look at 4.8 fast, it's 10 and 50. Meaning it's only 2x more expensive. The reason I say only is if we look at 4.7, it is 5 and 25. But if we look at 4.7 fast, it is 30 and 150. It is six times more expensive than Opus 4.7. So there is a huge huge benefit of right now switching all of your agents to Opus 4.8 fast if you can afford it, of course, because not only do you get the two 2.5x faster inference, but it's no longer six times more expensive. It's just 2x more expensive. And I think that's absolute steal. And for me, I'm I instantly switched all of my agents to cloth opus 4.8 fast. And it's it's really huge. It's really game changer. Now, back to CMAX because really this is just scratching the surface of what's possible inside of CMAX. Now, to better understand how to actually use this multi- aent system, look at this graphic, right? So you have the orchestrator and you only talk to this one agent. You never even talk to any other agent. And the orchestrator because it has the CMAX skill that I built which again if you want that click the first link below the video and I'll email it to you. It will use that skill to see every other agent and list all the workspaces check progress by using read screen. These are different terminal commands in the CMAC CLI and then it gives a new task to each of these agents. Right? So it does this in a loop and so far we've done it on a different projects. Right? Right. So, each of them build a simple app, but the most effective and the most impressive is when they work together on a single project. Right? So, I'm going to switch here into Cmax video. I'm going to u kill all of these. Boom. Boom. Boom. In fact, I don't have to do that. I can just do clear launch a pie here. Say u how many panes in this Cmax workspace. I'm going to say run clear in all of them. Boom. I'm just going to present that as the next prompt. Okay, good. Now make all of them the same width and height so it's a nice 2x two grid. Next up I want you to launch cloud code with dangerously skip permissions in the other three empty panes inside of this CMAX workspace. And then I want you to begin building a 3D web app that is for architects designing interior rooms, interior architecture. And you should split it between these three cloth code agents running in the other three panes inside of this CMAX workspace. Make it clear that it should be a very simple web app, just a quick MVP, but make sure to split the development equally between these three cloud code agents. So get to work and start using the CMAX skill. Boom. I'm going to send this off and we're going to watch Pi being the orchestrator here. Let me do command option B to close the other sidebar so we have a bit more space. So first it needs to launch the cloud codes. Then it needs well it needs to launch them with dangerously skip permissions. Then it needs to somehow divide the project I described, right? And the reason I'm doing this is because I want to test Opus 48 fast. Remember we're using it inside of Pi but also inside of Cloud Core I'm going to be using it. So there it is. Boom. This never gets old, guys. This never gets old. Watching multiple CMAX terminals being ran and new agents being launched in them. It's just beautiful. Okay, so this will test Opus 4.8 on its visual front end capabilities because it's common knowledge that OpenAI models GBD 5.5. Even though they're great at large refactors, they suck at front end. Since OPU 4.8 is the latest and greatest model from Entropic, I want to see how good it is at front end design. And I already know because I did a few tests and let me tell you the results were the single most impressive one shots I've ever seen. Like incredible. That's why I'm doing this this specific example because I already know the result will be absolutely insane. Opus 4.8 is great at 3D. It understands 3D so well and it is great at design and front end. Now the question is, is it better at like massive refactors and deep problematic bugs than GPD 5.5 extra high? Probably not. I mean, look, it came out less than 24 hours ago, so we still need to do more testing. I used it for many hours, but hey, we still need to do a lot more testing. But if we do um command shift B, we can see some progress being made. Room designer, we can open that and see our app being built. Okay. So, I'm going to say keep checking on the progress of the free agents every 20 seconds or so until the app is fully built. So, I'm going to start the loop like this. And my PI agent is powered by the open router API running Opus 4.8 fast mode inside of it. Right? So, the cloth codes are not running fast mode because uh it would absolutely drain my subscription. And in fact, if I do slashfast, I think I already used it up. So, boom. Let me toggle it on. Say, "Hey." Okay. So, the app is here. Let me copy that. I'm actually going to switch to Brave browser and I'm going to launch it here to see it fully. Okay. So, this is fully not built. All right. Bed, table, chair, sofa. This is uh very basic obviously, but don't judge Opus 4.8 made based on this because again we told it to be a quick demo. These agents ran for like 50 seconds. This is not the highest effort, right? If we do slasheffort, I have only medium effort inside of cloud code. So what happens when you do the new ultra code, right? This is the new absolutely beast mode version of cloud code which obviously will eat your limits faster than hungry person can eat their lunch. I mean that was a crazy analogy but what is the result of ultra cold? It's basically like one step below above max, right? So up this might be like even a bigger update than Opus 4.8 because 4.8 made before then we had the extra high and max as the highest tiers of reasoning effort but now enthropic added ultra code which uses the dynamic workflows feature and again I could make a full video on that but this is basically the next step of like / goal the next evolution where you describe the outcome and cloud code figures out the best way to reach it and if that means launching multiple different dynamic workflows with dozens or sometimes even hundreds of sub agents in there So be it. What is the result of it? The result of this is absolutely incredible. So I have this uh demo, which is the same prompt, by the way. So literally the same thing that these agents just did, but instead of running for 50 seconds, I let it run for 20 minutes. And the result is is crazy. So let me go into global here. I'm going to I'm going to say kill the other three paints in here. They're kind of useless. And what I want to do is I want to go to documents, do ls. I want to go to my code folder and see what we have there. Testing CMax. What is the project in here? Okay, that's not the project I'm looking for. I think it's the Blueprint Studio. Say check blueprint studio subfolder and let me know what that app is. Be very concise. If it's the right thing, I'll say, "Okay, good. Now, open this as a new tab." First of all, launch this and then open this as a new tab inside of my Brave browser. So, this is the result of running the Ultra Code feature inside of U Cloud Code with Opus 4.8. It ran for like 20 minutes and I'm going to show you the software. This is crazy. This is the biggest This is the best oneshot project I've ever seen. Again, this was oneshoted by Opus 4.8 inside of Cloud Code with the Ultra Code. So if you want to access ultra code which is the digital workflows feature just do slashef effort boom and you switch to ultra code right here and it has all these fancy graphics I don't know it feels very like um bread and circuses from enthropic but listen this feature can build okay this was built in a single single prompt single prompt no errors and it worked on first try we can change the dimensions of the room look at It's a 3D design app and we can select all of these object, right? So, I'm going to select the plant. We can move it around. This is this could be like sold to companies for designing in for interior design. We can do rotation. Rotate this plant. Okay, let me zoom in a bit. I'm doing this on my trackpad, by the way. So, rotating this plant. I mean, okay, plant is kind of bad example for rotating. The TV is better for rotating. We can also rescale by clicking scale and you know make it wider, make it um taller, make it just bigger overall. We can also add, for example, another sofa, you know, do move this sofa around. Boom. Maybe we want um wardrobe. Okay, easy. Move it to the corner. Maybe the room should be a bit taller. Okay, we're gonna make the room taller. We're gonna make the room a bit deeper. Okay, we're going to change it to 2D plan. So, we have the layout from top. We're going to switch to back to 3D. Do you see this? This is incredible. This is incredible. So, Opus 4.8, first of all, really, really good model. And second of all, cloth code has been massively upgraded with the ultra code feature, which again can easily run for 20, 30, 40 minutes on a single thing. And yeah, it will definitely burn through your subscription faster, but man, is the result worth it. So the reason I'm showing you this is because you can run all of this inside of CMAX, right? Multiple Cmax terminals running on different projects. Like you have one building an app here, you have one building an app here, different workspaces. And when it finishes, you'll get a nice notification. And again, remember this keyboard shortcut, command shiftU, it will jump to the latest unread instance inside of CMAX, so that you can quickly unblock that agent and keep on building. Oh, and by the way, to efficiently close tabs, you can do command W. Just like in Chrome, you can do command W to close a tab and it will close it. Right? So when you have multiple different u instances and look how easy it is to create a beautiful grid, right? Just do command D, command shift D, command shift D, very clean. And we have the nice 2x two grid. And then you can launch different agents inside of each of them. Entirely up to you, right? This is CMAX. Okay, it's a elegant terminal for managing AI agents. And since I installed it, I use it every single day. And honestly, I don't see myself switching back because again, it's free. It's open source. It's super fast and it's just a pleasure to use, especially when you set up the skill for CMAX, right? So, I'm going to boom, skill Cmax. The CMAS skill teaches the agent how to drive CMAX, a native Mac OS terminal app. It tells it everything. Window, workspace, pane, surface, explains it to agents just like I explained it to you. So again, if you want this skill, it's going to be available inside of the bundle. Click the first link below the video. It's completely free. I'm going to email this to you. And yeah, thank you guys for watching. Hopefully you enjoy this video. If you want me to make more videos on CMAX, make sure to hit subscribe. And I wish you a wonderful, productive week. See you.