The official terminal emulator of the Southbag Global Enterprise Network.
A tabbed terminal emulator built on Electron, xterm.js and node-pty. It is styled after Southbag Online Banking and requires a Southbag account.
- Tabs: open as many as you like, switch with the keyboard, middle-click to close. A tab closes when its shell exits.
- Multiple windows.
- Mandatory Southbag login: no shell starts until Southbag Identity has verified your account. When you log out, or Identity stops accepting your session, every shell in every window is terminated.
- Palantir analytics: every action in the app is reported to Southbag's PostHog.
- Dark mode: unlike the banking site's, this one works.
| Action | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|
| New tab | ⌘T | Ctrl+Shift+T |
| New window | ⌘N | Ctrl+Shift+N |
| Close tab | ⌘W | Ctrl+Shift+W |
| Next / previous tab | ⌘⇧] / ⌘⇧[ | Ctrl+PgDn / Ctrl+PgUp |
| Go to tab 1–9 | ⌘1–9 | Alt+1–9 |
| Copy / paste | ⌘C / ⌘V | Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V |
| Clear scrollback | ⌘K | Ctrl+Shift+K |
| Text size | ⌘= / ⌘- / ⌘0 | Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0 |
Login follows the same pattern as the other Southbag apps (Online Banking, Southbag Code): OAuth 2.1 with PKCE against identity.southbag.cc, using a public client registered through dynamic client registration. Because this is a desktop app, it follows RFC 8252:
- The app starts a loopback server on
127.0.0.1(preferring port 47619 so the redirect URI stays the same) and registers a client for that redirect URI the first time it's used. - Your system browser opens Identity's authorize page. You log in (or reuse your existing
.southbag.ccsession) and approve Southbag Terminal. - Identity redirects back to the loopback server. The app exchanges the code for tokens and loads your profile from
/oauth2/userinfo. - Tokens are stored in the app's user-data directory, encrypted with the OS keychain (Electron
safeStorage). They're refreshed automatically and checked again every 5 minutes.
If Identity can't be reached at launch, the terminal stays locked: an account that can't be verified gets no shell.
Set SOUTHBAG_IDENTITY_URL to point the app at a different Identity instance.
The analytics setup copies the other Southbag apps: the same PostHog project, proxied through palantir.southbag.cc, with the super property southbag_app: "terminal". Each person is identified by their Identity sub, so their activity links up across every Southbag product. Events are batched in the main process, as in Southbag Code's palantir.ts. The renderer forwards its events over IPC.
What's captured:
- App lifecycle: launch, quit, crashes, errors, suspend/resume, lock/unlock, power source, theme and display changes
- Windows: open, close, focus, blur, resize, minimise, maximise, full screen
- Login: started, completed, failed, cancelled, restored, refreshed, logged out
- Tabs and shells: opened, closed, switched (and how), shell spawned and exited (exit code, lifetime, bytes in and out)
- Every button click, menu action and keyboard shortcut
- Terminal activity per minute: keystroke count, output bytes, copy and paste counts
- Resizes, font size, dark mode, bells, links opened
What's never sent: keystrokes, commands, terminal output, clipboard contents, window titles, paths, environment variables. Only names, counts, sizes and durations leave your machine, the same rule Southbag Code follows. Set SOUTHBAG_PALANTIR_DISABLED=1 to turn analytics off (for development and tests).
Download a build for your platform from Releases.
| Platform | Formats |
|---|---|
| macOS (Apple silicon, Intel) | .dmg, .zip |
| Linux (x64, arm64) | .AppImage, .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz |
| Windows | Not supported. Please visit a branch. |
macOS builds are unsigned. On first launch, right-click the app and choose Open, or run xattr -cr "/Applications/Southbag Terminal.app".
Requires Node.js 22 and a C/C++ toolchain (node-pty is compiled for Electron on install).
npm install
npm startnpm run check # syntax-check every source file
npm test # auth + analytics tests against a mock Identity server
npm run dist # package for the current platform into dist/src/main/main.js app lifecycle, windows, menu, IPC, login gate
src/main/auth.js Southbag Identity login (OAuth + PKCE, loopback redirect)
src/main/palantir.js PostHog batching and identification
src/main/pty.js shells (node-pty), owned per window
src/main/preload.js the renderer's narrow `window.southbag` API
src/renderer/ login screen, tabs, xterm.js
Push a tag like v2.1.0. The release workflow stamps that version, runs the tests, builds Linux x64 and arm64 on native runners and both macOS architectures on a macOS runner, then publishes a GitHub Release with every artifact and a SHA256SUMS.txt. Tags that contain a - (for example v2.1.0-rc.1) are published as prereleases.
Released into the public domain (Unlicense). No warranty is provided.