What is Novalis?

Novalis is an AI-native terminal emulator: a single pure-Rust binary drawn on the GPU (Metal / DX12 / Vulkan), with block-based output, a real agent runtime, and an MCP surface that lets outside agents drive the terminal itself.

The name comes from the hovercraft in The Matrix, and from the Romantic poet who gave us the blue flower. The ship is the metaphor the product is built on:

The ship for AI agents to drive. Powered by LLMs, directed by humans.

The shape of it

• A real terminal first. Full VTE emulation on a battle-tested grid, warm PTY pool, 10k scrollback, kitty graphics + kitty keyboard, OSC 7/52/133, SSH sessions with a remote file tree.
• Blocks, not scrollback soup. Shell integration marks every prompt/command/output boundary; commands become addressable blocks you can copy, bookmark, re-run, and navigate (Alt+↑/Alt+↓).
• An agent runtime aboard. ⌘L asks a model; ⌘⇧L starts an agent conversation with tools; gated by per-tool approval policies you control.
• Crews, not just copilots. Novalis observes, spawns, and orchestrates multi-agent teams natively; each teammate in its own pane.
• A cockpit other agents can fly. Run novalis --mcp-server and the window becomes 38 MCP tools: open tabs, split panes, read scrollback, wait for output, spawn agent panes.

What Novalis is not

• Not a webview in a trench coat. One Rust binary, no embedded browser, no JS runtime; the grid is painted straight into the GPU frame.
• Not an autopilot. Agents propose; the approval gate disposes. Every tool call passes a policy you set, and every edit can be rolled back.
• Not cloud-required. Local-first: your PTYs, your keys (in the OS keychain), your machine. Ollama works fully offline.

Where to go next

You want to…	Read
Install and run it	Getting started
Learn the keys	Keyboard reference
Use the AI bar and agent mode	Agent mode
Run a crew of agents	Agent teams
Drive Novalis from your own agent	The MCP server
Make it yours	Themes · Configuration