mcp-terminator

Playwright for terminals. An MCP server that lets AI agents interact with terminal applications through structured UI element detection.

Instead of raw terminal text, your AI agent gets a Terminal State Tree — buttons, inputs, tables, menus, borders, checkboxes, progress bars, and status bars detected and labeled with positions and ref IDs.

{
  "elements": [
    { "type": "border", "ref_id": "border_1", "bounds": {"row": 0, "col": 0, "width": 80, "height": 24}, "title": "My App" },
    { "type": "button", "ref_id": "button_1", "bounds": {"row": 5, "col": 10, "width": 8, "height": 1}, "label": "Submit" },
    { "type": "input", "ref_id": "input_1", "bounds": {"row": 3, "col": 10, "width": 30, "height": 1}, "value": "hello" }
  ]
}

• 10 MCP tools for terminal interaction (create sessions, type, press keys, snapshot, wait for conditions)
• 8 UI element detectors — borders, menus, tables, inputs, buttons, checkboxes, progress bars, status bars
• Terminal State Tree (TST) — structured snapshot with detected elements, cursor position, and raw text
• Multi-session — manage multiple terminal sessions concurrently
• PTY-based — real terminal emulation with full ANSI escape sequence support
• Pure Go — single binary, no external dependencies, no CGo

go install github.com/davidroman0O/mcp-terminator/cmd/mcp-terminator@latest

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/davidroman0O/mcp-terminator.git
cd mcp-terminator
go build -o mcp-terminator ./cmd/mcp-terminator/

Add to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "terminator": {
      "command": "mcp-terminator"
    }
  }
}

Or in your project's .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "terminator": {
      "command": "/path/to/mcp-terminator"
    }
  }
}

MCP Terminator uses stdio transport. Point your MCP client at the