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Forkbench vs macOS Terminal
Terminal.app is the terminal that ships with macOS. It is free, always installed, and handles tabs, split panes, profiles and saved window settings.
Terminal.app is already on your Mac and it is genuinely fine. It opens instantly, it does tabs and splits, and for a shell and an editor there is nothing wrong with it. It was designed long before anyone ran four AI agents at once, though, and it shows in one specific way: it has no concept of what any tab is for. Forkbench is a Mac app for running coding agents, with the same real login shell in every pane, built around that missing concept.
| Forkbench | macOS Terminal | |
|---|---|---|
| Real login shell | Yes, a generic PTY per tab | Yes |
| Your tools (tmux, vim, fzf, zsh) | Untouched | Untouched |
| Built for coding agents | Yes, the whole design | No |
| Workspace grouping | Threads with folder, notes, secrets, board | Tabs and profiles |
| Task board that survives a reboot | Yes, per Thread | No |
| Secrets handling | Vault (Pro), sealed on your Mac | Inherits the shell environment |
| Git worktrees | One click, plus a live git panel | Manual |
| Unattended runs | Scheduled prompts and Sleep Control | No |
| Remote and multi-Mac | Yes (Pro) | No |
| Price | Free; Pro €30/mo; Team $30/seat, dropping to $20 at scale | Free, bundled |
| Credentials an agent can use but never read | Vault (Pro) holds it, and it goes to the one command that needs it, so it never reaches the prompt, the command line or the transcript. A seatbelt, not a guarantee: an agent you authorise for a command could still print what it was handed. | Not a terminal feature. A key in your shell or in a .env is readable by anything you run, agents included. |
Where macOS Terminal is strong
- Already installed, opens instantly, and nothing to trust or download.
- Free, and it does tabs, split panes, profiles and saved window settings.
- Apple maintains it, so it will not disappear.
Where Forkbench differs
- A key in Vault (Pro) lets an agent run commands with your keys without the value entering its context.
- Folders the macOS kernel enforces. A Thread can be locked to the folders the job is about, applied as each shell starts and inherited by every process it spawns, so an agent cannot read or write outside them. Builds still run and the network is untouched.
- Tabs group into Threads, each with its own folder, notes, secrets and task board.
- A board that outlives the terminal. Close a pane, quit, or reboot, and the plan and blockers are still there.
- A git panel that reflects the focused tab, plus a new branch on a fresh worktree in one click.
- Schedule a prompt for later, keep the Mac awake with the lid shut, and answer a blocked agent from your phone.
The bottom line
If your terminal is for the occasional git command, the built-in Terminal is all you need and installing anything would be silly. The moment coding agents are most of what runs in it, the missing piece is not features, it is that nothing remembers what each tab was doing. Forkbench is free, keeps your shell identical, and adds that memory.
Keep reading
- How keys, notes and boards are actually protected, including where each defence stops.
- Keeping API keys away from AI coding agents
- Every comparison
Comparison based on publicly available information as of mid-2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.