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Workshop Desktop runs directly on your machine, giving the agent full access to your local file system. There are no restrictions on which files the agent can read, write, or execute — your project is a real directory you can open in any editor or terminal.

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Real-Time File Watching

Workshop Desktop monitors your project directory for changes. When you edit a file in an external editor, create new files, or delete something — Workshop detects it immediately and updates the file tree in the sidebar. The file watcher is .gitignore-aware — files and directories listed in your .gitignore are excluded from the file tree by default, keeping the view focused on the files that matter.

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File Tree

The sidebar displays your project’s file structure as an expandable tree. It mirrors your actual directory layout on disk. Key behaviors:
  • Expand on demand — Click a folder to load and display its contents. Subdirectories are fetched lazily to keep the interface responsive.
  • Automatic updates — When the file watcher detects changes (new files, deletions, renames), the affected directories refresh automatically.
  • Drag and drop — Drag files from your system into the chat to add their path to your message, giving the agent context about specific files.

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Terminal Sessions

Workshop manages its own headless terminal sessions — full PTY-backed shells that the agent can create, use, and destroy as needed. These aren’t embedded terminal UIs; they’re real shell processes that the agent drives programmatically, reading output and sending input (including key presses) just like a human would. Terminal sessions work on both Workshop Desktop (running on your local machine) and Workshop Cloud (running in the cloud backend). On Desktop, the session uses your default shell. On Cloud, sessions run in the cloud environment.

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How the agent uses terminals

The agent has three core terminal operations:
  • Create / close sessions — Spin up or tear down independent shell sessions on demand.
  • Execute commands — Run a command and wait for output, with optional timeouts.
  • Send keystrokes — Type text or press keys (Enter, Ctrl+C, arrow keys, etc.) into a running session, enabling interaction with prompts, TUIs, and long-running processes.
The agent can run multiple sessions concurrently. For example, you can tell it:
“Run my app in one terminal, and use a different terminal for dependency management and git.”
Each session is independent — stopping one doesn’t affect the others.

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Supported shells

Sessions use your system’s default shell. Commonly used shells include:
ShellPlatform
zshmacOS (default), Linux
bashLinux (default), macOS
fishmacOS, Linux
PowerShellWindows

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Viewing terminal activity

You can view active terminal sessions in the Terminals tab of the side panel. When the agent is running a long command, a “View activity in terminal →” link appears in the status bar to jump directly there.

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Built on ht

Workshop’s terminal sessions are powered by ht (headless terminal), an open-source library that wraps any shell process with a VT100 terminal interface for programmatic access. We also maintain ht-mcp, an open-source MCP server that lets other AI agents embed the same headless terminal capability.
Because Workshop Desktop has full file system access, treat it like any other development tool — keep important files under version control and use Checkpoints to snapshot your project state before major changes.