cockpit-terminals

name	cockpit-terminals
description	Use when the user should see terminal output live, when you need a persistent shell (SSH, virtualenvs), or when collaborating in a shared terminal.

cockpit-terminals

Your session has terminal tabs in the Open Cockpit sidebar. Tab 0 is the Claude TUI (you) — only shell tabs (1+) accept commands. Fresh sessions may only have tab 0; term open or term exec creates a shell tab.

Examples

# Run a command in an existing shell tab, get clean output
cockpit-cli term run 1 'git status'

# One-shot: opens ephemeral tab → runs → returns output → closes
cockpit-cli term exec 'npm test'

# Read last 15 lines of a tab (always use --tail to avoid flooding context)
cockpit-cli term read 1 --tail 15

# Wait for a long command to finish, then get recent output
cockpit-cli term read 1 --wait 'Build complete' --timeout 120 --tail 20

Command Reference

Subcommand	Description
run <tab> 'cmd' [--timeout N]	Run command, return clean output. Default 30s — set higher for slow commands. Errors on timeout.
exec 'cmd' [--timeout N]	Like run but opens an ephemeral tab (auto-closes after).
read <tab> --tail N	Last N lines of buffer (ANSI-stripped). Always use --tail — raw read dumps the entire scrollback.
read <tab> --wait PATTERN [--timeout N]	Poll until regex matches (default 30s). Combine with --tail.
write <tab> 'text\r'	Type into terminal (\r = Enter). For interactive programs or when run can't detect completion.
key <tab> <keyname>	Send a key: ctrl-c, ctrl-d, ctrl-l, ctrl-z, enter, escape, tab, up, down, left, right, backspace
ls	List tabs (index, label, TUI flag)
open [/path]	New persistent shell tab
close <tab>	Close a shell tab
watch <tab>	Stream output live (ctrl-c to stop)

Troubleshooting

cockpit-cli not found: Use full path ~/.open-cockpit/bin/cockpit-cli.

API socket not found / ENOENT: Open Cockpit isn't running. Ask the user to restart it — terminals survive restarts.