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AI coding tools are shifting to a surprising place: The terminal


For years, code-editing tools like Cursor, Windsurf, and GitHub’s Copilot have been the standard for AI-powered software development. But as agentic AI grows more powerful and vibe-coding takes off, a subtle shift has changed how AI systems are interacting with software. Instead of working on code, they’re increasingly interacting directly with the shell of whatever system they’re installed in. It’s a significant change in how AI-powered software development happens – and despite the low profile, it could have significant implications for where the field goes from here.

The AI code editor Windsurf has been torn apart by dueling acquisitions, with senior executives hired away by Google and the remaining company acquired by Cognition – leaving the consumer product’s long-term future uncertain. In one TerminalBench problem, the instructions give a decompression program and a target text file, challenging the agent to reverse-engineer a matching compression algorithm. Warp earned its high score on TerminalBench by solving just over half of the problems – a mark of how challenging the benchmark is, but also how much work still needs to be done to unlock the terminal’s full potential.

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