Compare
Ghostty Alternative for Running AI Coding Agents
Ghostty is a fast, zero-config, MIT-licensed terminal emulator for macOS and Linux, written in Zig by Mitchell Hashimoto.
Most people looking past Ghostty are not unhappy with Ghostty. They have started running Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI in several tabs at once, and the terminal that was perfect for one shell has nothing to say about four agents. Ghostty is deliberately agent-neutral, which is the right call for a terminal emulator and the wrong one if agents are most of what you run. Forkbench keeps the same real shell and puts the missing layer around it: each piece of work in its own Thread, carrying its plan, its notes and its keys.
| Forkbench | Ghostty | |
|---|---|---|
| Why people switch | Running several agents at once | Speed and simplicity |
| Real login shell | Yes | Yes |
| Workspace grouping | Threads with folder, notes, secrets, board | Tabs and splits |
| Survives quit and reboot | The board does | No |
| Cross-vendor agent hand-off | Yes, no vendor field on a task | Not applicable |
| Secrets | Vault (Pro), sealed on your Mac | Shell environment |
| Phone and web access | Talk (Pro) | No |
| Platform | macOS 13+ | macOS and Linux |
| Price | Free; Pro €30/mo | Free |
| 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 Ghostty is strong
- Nothing about its speed or polish is in question. It is the fastest terminal on macOS in most 2026 benchmarks.
- Open source under MIT, and it runs on Linux too.
- Zero config, so there is no setup cost to going back to it.
Where Forkbench differs
- Keys an agent can use and never read, with optional Touch ID on every use. Vault is part of Pro.
- 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.
- Agents get a workspace, not just a tab. A Thread holds the folder, the notes, the secrets and the backlog for one piece of work.
- Work stops dying with the session. The board is written to disk as it changes, so a plan an agent wrote this morning is claimable this afternoon.
- Any vendor's agent, on one board. Nothing on a task records which agent wrote it, so a task Claude Code wrote is claimable by a Codex pane.
- Answer a blocked agent from your phone instead of walking back to the desk.
The bottom line
Keep Ghostty installed. It costs nothing and it is genuinely excellent at the job it chose. The question is only whether the job you now have is still that job. If most of your terminal time is you typing, Ghostty wins. If most of it is watching agents work, you want the board, the vault and the remote, and every Forkbench account starts with 30 days of all of it without a card. The terminal stays free afterwards either way.
Keep reading
Comparison based on publicly available information as of mid-2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.