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otter-term is Otter Shell’s built-in terminal emulator. It uses libghostty-vt for terminal emulation and Otter libraries for Wayland windowing, PTY handling, input, rendering, configuration, and clipboard. Tabs, horizontal and vertical splits, shell integration via OSC sequences, and IME support. No X11 dependency.

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Launching

Pass a directory path to open there, or use -e to run a command instead of your default shell. 
otter-term                                      # open with default shell
otter-term /path/to/project                     # open in directory
otter-term --cwd /path/to/project               # same, with explicit flag
otter-term --working-directory /path/to/project # long form of --cwd
otter-term -e htop                              # run a command
otter-term -- nano file.txt                     # pass arguments to command

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Features

Tabs

Multiple terminal tabs in one window. Close buttons appear per tab and hide when only one tab remains.

Split Panes

Split any tab horizontally or vertically. Each pane has its own focus, resizes independently, and closes without affecting the others.

Shell Integration

OSC 7 tracks the current working directory so new tabs and splits open in the right place. OSC 133 captures command output for the context menu.

URL Handling

http://, https://, and www. URLs are detected, underlined on hover, and opened with a configurable command (default: xdg-open).

IME Support

Full zwp_text_input_v3 support with preedit text display and candidate-window positioning at the terminal cursor.

Clipboard

Copy with Ctrl+Shift+C and paste with Ctrl+Shift+V. Primary selection and a right-click context menu are also supported.

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Configuration

otter-term reads ~/.config/otter-shell/otter-term.conf. The file loads on startup and hot-reloads whenever you save it. Font, colors, padding, and grid size update without restarting the terminal. 
general_shell = ""
general_term = "xterm-256color"
general_width = 900
general_height = 560
general_scrollback_rows = 10000

font_family = "IoskeleyMono Nerd Font"
font_size = 14
font_dpi_aware = true
font_scale_percent = 100

padding_x = 4
padding_y = 4

keybinds_copy = "ctrl+shift+c"
keybinds_paste = "ctrl+shift+v"

url_enabled = true
url_underline = true
url_highlight_on_hover = true
url_open_command = "xdg-open"

scroll_fixed_per_row = 10
scroll_rows_per_notch = 3

shell_capture_output = false

bell_enabled = true
bell_command = "paplay /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga"
bell_visual = false
general_shell = "" uses $SHELL, falling back to /bin/sh if unset. The default general_term value xterm-256color works best for remote hosts over SSH. Only set it to xterm-ghostty when the target host has that terminfo entry installed.
Set shell_capture_output = true to enable OSC 133 command-output capture. The right-click context menu then gets a Copy Last Output action that copies the full output of the most recent command. Off by default to keep large command output off the hot PTY path.

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Color Palette

The color palette uses colors_* keys in the same config file. Defaults include a full 16-color terminal palette plus foreground, background, cursor, selection, and URL accent colors. Palette changes are hot-reloaded. Save the file and new colors apply to all open panes.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

ActionShortcut
Copy selectionCtrl+Shift+C
PasteCtrl+Shift+V
New tabRight-click → New Tab
Split paneRight-click → Split Pane