Terminal

Terminal opens a real shell on the server, rooted in a working copy of your files: your Personal space, a firm's, or a client's, chosen with a scope picker. Standard tooling is available there, including git and claude (Claude Code), running against your firm's AI credential. It's the tool for bulk and irregular work: renaming a thousand files by pattern, running a script over a batch of exports, or using Claude Code against a body of documents. Anything where a shell is simply the right tool and clicking through the interface is not.

Terminal works in an ordinary web browser as well as the desktop app, and it's available to every operator by default (an administrator can hide it for a specific person, in which case it also disappears from the Files app's "Open in Terminal" shortcut).

Where to find it

Open Terminal from the dock. It shows up in the standard flat nav list, not under a section.

Key concepts

Scope. The working tree the shell is rooted in: your Personal space, a firm you

operate in, or a client you can reach. You can reach every scope you're permitted to see, in one session; there's no separate sign-in per scope.

Session. One running shell. Each tab is its own independent session; closing a

tab ends that session.

Default landing directory. The folder a new shell lands in when it opens, set

once from the gear icon and honored by every session after that.

Use it

Open Terminal. You land at a shell prompt showing the email you're signed in

with, inside the working tree you can reach.

Move between your Personal space, your firms, and your clients the same way you'd

move directories in any shell: cd into personal, firms/<firm name>, or clients/<client name>.

Multiple tabs run in one window. Cmd/Option+T opens a new tab, Cmd/Option+W

closes one, and Cmd/Option+[ / ] switches between tabs. Closing the last tab closes the window.

You see exactly the folders and files you can already see in Files, nothing more. A file in a shared space you don't have access to simply isn't there, the same way it wouldn't show up in the Files app.

Set your default landing directory

Click the gear icon at the top of Terminal.
Type the virtual path you want every new session to start in (a list of the scopes

you can reach autocompletes as you type).

Save. Every new shell you open from then on lands there.

It writes back to Files

Edits you make in the shell reconcile back into the Files app automatically, within a few seconds of settling, and again when the session closes. So a script that reorganizes a folder, or a Claude Code session that edits documents, shows up in the Files app without a separate import step, and other people's open Files views refresh too. A file uploaded through the Files app the normal way likewise appears in the shell within a few seconds. Each scope is its own git repository, so git status, log, diff, and branch all work; changes that arrived from the Files app show up already committed, and anything you create in the terminal itself is left uncommitted for you to stage and commit yourself.

Deleting a file is intentionally not synced either direction, so a stray rm in the shell can't wipe out something in your Files drive, and vice versa.

Claude Code in the Terminal

Run claude in any Terminal session to start Claude Code against your firm's AI credential. You never configure authentication yourself; that's managed centrally, the same way it is for AI Chat.

model. Lists the AI models available to you, with the one currently set as

your default marked.

model set <number or id>. Sets your default model. It applies to the very

next claude run and persists across future sessions.

claude --model <id>. Runs one Claude Code invocation against a specific

model, overriding your default just for that run.

If no AI model has been set up for you, claude prints a message asking you to contact your administrator instead of failing silently.

Token usage and tracking

Time spent running Claude Code in Terminal is priced and recorded to AI › Tokens alongside every other AI surface in Bitment, under its own "Terminal, Claude Code" line, so it counts toward the same usage picture as your chats and agents rather than disappearing into a blind spot.

Safety

Terminal gives you a genuine, capable shell, full tool access, not a sandboxed toy, but it's still confined in the ways that matter for a shared, server-hosted tool:

You can only see what you can already see. The working tree handed to your

session is built from the exact same permission check the Files app uses, so a file or folder you can't access in Files was never written into your shell's workspace in the first place. It isn't hidden, it's simply absent.

Stray writes stay inside your scope. The session confines file changes to the

working tree it opened, so a runaway script can't wander off into the wrong place.

Your firm's AI credential never reaches your browser. It's resolved and

injected on the server, exactly like every other AI surface in Bitment. There's no key for you to see, copy, or misplace.

A session doesn't survive a crash. If a session ends unexpectedly, reopening

Terminal starts a fresh one; there's no persistent state to clean up or worry about.

Tips

Terminal is a desktop/power-user surface today; it isn't optimized for a phone's

on-screen keyboard.

If a Terminal shell disconnects mid-session, reopening it starts a genuinely fresh

shell rather than resuming. Treat a long-running job as something to keep an eye on, not something to leave unattended across a dropped connection.

Use the Open in Terminal action on a folder in Files to jump straight into a

new shell tab rooted at that folder.