CAT Manual

Coding Agent Terminal, installed and connected.

CAT today is a desktop terminal app — this manual is honest about that. Where a platform isn't supported yet, it says so instead of describing something that doesn't exist. For the shorter quick-start, see Help; for how CAT ties to your Fomoji identity, see the main manual.

1What is CAT?

CAT (Coding Agent Terminal) is a Python + Textual terminal application: four themed AI modes (Notebook, Agent, Build, Plan), a real file explorer and code editor with tree-sitter syntax highlighting, an agent tool suite, a from-scratch quantum simulator with OpenQASM support, and an MCP server so other MCP clients can use CAT's tools. It talks to 109+ model providers plus local and cloud Ollama.

2Installation — Windows Live

CAT ships as a Python package, so Windows, Linux, and macOS all follow the same underlying steps — a virtual environment, then pip. Prerequisite: Python 3.10+ on your PATH (the Windows installer's "Add python.exe to PATH" checkbox handles this).

# from a Command Prompt or PowerShell, inside the CAT project folder
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate

pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m calc_terminal

3Installation — Linux Live

Same package, standard venv flow. Prerequisite: Python 3.10+ and its venv module (on Debian/Ubuntu that's the python3-venv package if it isn't already present).

cd cat-project
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m calc_terminal

4Installation — macOS Live

Identical flow to Linux. Prerequisite: Python 3.10+ — the system Python that ships with macOS is usually too old, so install a current one via python.org or Homebrew (brew install python) first.

cd cat-project
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m calc_terminal

Same gotcha on every OS: syntax highlighting depends on the textual[syntax] extra, not plain textual. If code looks unhighlighted after install, check that requirements.txt pins the syntax extra.

5Browser Planned

There's no browser or PWA build of CAT yet. CAT is a native Textual terminal app that runs in an actual terminal emulator — this page won't claim a Web/PWA version exists until one does.

6iPhone/iPad Planned

Not supported yet. There's no iOS app and no browser build to run as a home-screen PWA. The realistic path today, if you need CAT away from your main machine, is SSH-ing into a computer that already has it installed, from any terminal-capable SSH client.

7Android Planned

Same situation as iOS — no native app, no browser build. Termux (a real Linux terminal environment for Android) can run CAT today using the same Linux install steps above, since it's genuinely Python + a terminal, not a special Android build.

8Tablets Planned

No touch-optimized terminal toolbar exists yet. A tablet running a real Linux environment (or SSH into one) can use CAT exactly as a desktop would, keyboard permitting — there's just nothing tablet-specific built for it.

9CAT authentication Half-built — see limitations

CAT signs in using your Fomoji identity rather than a separate password. From Fomoji's side, this is real: open Settings → Connected apps and hit Connect — you'll see exactly what CAT would get (identity verification, no password sharing, one-tap future sign-ins), and confirming genuinely saves that authorization to your account.

What isn't real yet: CAT itself doesn't call this flow. There's no redirect from a running CAT session into this consent screen and back, so today "Connect" records your consent but nothing on the CAT side changes yet. See Limitations.

10CAT Remote Planned

There's no hosted or remote-environment version of CAT — every install above runs locally against whatever machine you installed it on. "Remote" access today just means SSH into that machine, the same as any other terminal app.

11CAT Sessions Planned

CAT's own Recent Projects list lets you reopen folders you've worked in before, but there's no cross-device session resume or handoff — that needs a backend to track session state centrally, which doesn't exist in this build.

12Terminal controls Live

CAT's own commands are prefixed with /@#!$%*+_, routing to different subsystems (chat, code, calc, sim, export) each with their own history. Global keyboard shortcuts:

`Ctrl`+`P`	Command palette
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`W`	Close tab (plain Ctrl+W is claimed by delete-word in the editor)
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`T`	Reopen last closed tab
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`Z`	Toggle word wrap for the current tab

The editor shows a dirty-tab indicator (●) for unsaved changes, supports safe close/reopen, and shows a one-time banner if syntax highlighting isn't installed correctly. There's no mobile terminal toolbar — see the platform sections above.

13Limitations

To be precise about what "connecting CAT to Fomoji" currently means: it means recording a consent decision in Fomoji. It does not mean CAT has been given any access to your operating system, files, or accounts through Fomoji — Fomoji has no such access to grant, in a browser or anywhere else. CAT's own file and tool access is controlled entirely by CAT's own permission modes (Full Access, Ask Every Time, Custom), set inside CAT itself, independent of Fomoji.

Since there's no browser or mobile build of CAT at all yet, there's also nothing to compare a "browser CAT" against — every install above is the same local, desktop, native-terminal CAT with full normal OS access as any terminal program has, gated by your own OS permissions, not by Fomoji.