[Feature]: rightPanel.openTerminal, a keybinding command to open a terminal in the right panel

[dguay]

Before submitting

• I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
• I am describing a concrete problem or use case, not just a vague idea.

Area

apps/web

Problem or use case

The right panel can host a terminal surface, but there is no way to open one from the keyboard.

rightPanel.toggle only flips visibility (ChatView.tsx:3189-3199, calling useRightPanelStore.toggleVisibility). It restores whatever surface that thread last had, which may be diff, preview, or plan.

terminal.new does open a right-panel terminal, but only when focus is already there: if (terminalFocusOwner === "right-panel") { addTerminalSurface(); ... } (ChatView.tsx:4350-4356). That's a chicken-and-egg problem. To reach right-panel focus from the keyboard, the panel already has to be showing a terminal.

So from the composer there is no keystroke that puts a terminal on the right. The bottom drawer has terminal.toggle; the right panel has no equivalent, and sitting beside the diff is the main reason to want a terminal there at all.

Panel state is per-thread (right-panel-state:v2, byThreadKey), so even after opening one by hand, every new thread starts without it.

Related but different: #4641 asks for terminal.focus, which is about the bottom drawer. This one is about placement, getting a terminal into the right panel in the first place.

Proposed solution

Add one command, rightPanel.openTerminal, to STATIC_KEYBINDING_COMMANDS (packages/contracts/src/keybindings.ts:50-72), and dispatch it in ChatView.tsx alongside the existing rightPanel.toggle branch (ChatView.tsx:4303-4308):

• If the right panel is open and activeRightPanelSurface?.kind === "terminal", focus it by bumping terminalFocusRequestId, the way activateRightPanelSurface already does.
• Otherwise call addTerminalSurface() (ChatView.tsx:3068), which already opens the panel, creates the surface via useRightPanelStore.getState().openTerminal (apps/web/src/rightPanelStore.ts:289), and spawns the pty.

The capability is all there; it just has no command ID, so the store needs no changes. Shipping it with no default binding is fine. I'd bind mod+j.

Why this matters

A right-panel terminal sits next to the diff and stays put, which is a different job from the bottom drawer. Today, getting one requires the mouse on every new thread, and there is no config-level workaround, because the command set is a closed schema literal and a keybinding for this cannot be expressed.

Smallest useful scope

One command literal plus one dispatch branch that reuses addTerminalSurface. Even the open-only version, with no focus-if-already-open branch, would cover the common case.

Alternatives considered

Rebinding mod+j to rightPanel.toggle only works after manually creating a terminal surface in that thread, and it breaks as soon as the last surface was a diff or preview.

Patching app.asar locally invalidates the Developer ID signature under hardened runtime, and the ad-hoc re-sign then breaks Squirrel.Mac auto-update, since it validates the update against the running app's signing identity. That rules it out as a workaround.

Risks or tradeoffs

Naming: terminal.newInRightPanel would sit with the other terminal.* commands, while rightPanel.openTerminal reads as a panel action. Either works.

If #4641's terminal.focus lands, the two should agree on whether "focus" implies "open if closed".

Examples or references

No response

Contribution

• I would be open to helping implement this.

[juliusmarminge]

Note

Grok responding on behalf of Julius.

This is now covered by #15686, which just landed on main. Mod+T (Cmd+T on macOS, Ctrl+T on Windows/Linux) opens the right panel's + tab menu from the keyboard, and T in that menu opens a terminal tab, so Mod+T then T gets you a right-panel terminal without the mouse. The shortcut is rebindable as rightPanel.new and works in the desktop app and installed PWAs.

Closing as resolved. If a dedicated single-chord rightPanel.openTerminal binding is still worth having on top of this, feel free to open a new idea for it.