LatexTerm

A native macOS terminal that renders LaTeX live over the text — and doubles as a cockpit for Claude Code sessions.

Highlights

• Live LaTeX overlays — formulas between $…$, $$…$$, \(…\), \[…\] render as KaTeX exactly on their source characters. No OCR: a vendored SwiftTerm fork exposes the real cell grid.
• Hover, pin & export — hover shows a formula full-size; a click pins it with copy buttons: LaTeX, readable Unicode ((-b ± √(b²-4ac))/(2a)), PNG, vector PDF, Markdown.
• Edit loop — ✎ opens the formula in an inline editor with live preview; Enter types the result into your prompt.
• Auto-tiling panes — ⌘T splits into a balanced grid, ⌘⏎ zooms one pane, layout + working dirs survive a relaunch.
• Claude Code cockpit — every pane knows whether its agent is working, done, or waiting for input, notifies you, and picks up the session's /color as its accent. Agents drive the terminal themselves via the latexterm CLI.
• Plus: ⌘F search, KaTeX errors underlined instead of swallowed, overlays that follow the scroll, a native settings window (⌘,).

Why

The predecessor (LatexTerminalLive) read another terminal's screen with OCR — too flaky for greek glyphs and fractions. LatexTerm is the terminal, so formula positions come straight from the cell grid. Owning the grid paid off twice: the same buffer access now powers the Claude Code session detection.

How the LaTeX overlay works

PTY (login shell) → SwiftTerm VT parser → buffer grid
      → OverlayController scans visible rows
      → LaTeXDetector finds delimited formulas
      → one shared WKWebView + KaTeX renders each as a positioned <div>

• One WebView hosts all formulas; KaTeX loads once, offline (bundled CSS/JS/fonts).
• Overlays are keyed to the absolute scrollback row — scrolling repositions them (one GPU-composited translate) instead of rebuilding.
• Detection handles soft-wrapped inline formulas and multi-line $$ … $$ blocks; inline hits scale to fit their row.
• Clicks on empty space pass through to normal terminal selection; only formula hitboxes are interactive.

The deep-dive lives in the source — start at LatexTerm/Latex/OverlayController.swift.

Claude Code integration

Everything here is a plain terminal mechanism — escape sequences, an env var, a Unix socket. Nothing is hardwired to Claude; any agent or script can use the same channels.

Home pane — project launcher (⌘N)

The first pane on launch (and every ⌘N) is a home pane instead of a shell: the folder tree of your projects on the left (Finder order; ▣ project, ▤ area, ● where a Claude pane is running), and on the right the actions for the selected folder — ＋ Neue Session (default: type an alias, hit ⏎), ↻ Weiter (resume the last session, titled from Claude Code's own ai-title entries), › Nur Shell, and a collapsed ▸ Sessions row (→ opens it: pin, rename, the most recently active projects below that folder and earlier sessions; ← closes). Typing filters the tree, →/← expand/collapse or move between tree and actions, ⏎ runs the first action, ⌘⇧N opens the new-project dialog — name, alias, a one-sentence purpose, and the place: the selected folder, any folder via a Finder picker, or "noch offen" (not decided yet), which starts Claude at the root with --einordnen to work out where the project belongs before creating it. ⌘P pins a session, ⌘⇧P pins a project/folder (⇧⇥ shows the pin screen — projects on top, sessions below; a pinned project offers new session / resume / shell directly), ⌘E renames one — the custom title overrides Claude Code's ai-title (projekte rename <id> [title], empty = back to automatic). ⌘T stays a plain shell inheriting the focused pane's CWD. The pane has no footer: its commands live in the Home menu in the menu bar (new project ⌘⇧N, reload ⌘R, pin session/project ⌘P/⌘⇧P, rename ⌘E, show pins, key help ⌘/, only projects ⌘⇧B — hides every folder that is neither a project nor ever had a session — and expand/collapse all ⌘⇧A/⌘⇧E), and everything that cannot be a menu command — arrows, ⇥/⇧⇥, ⏎, type-to-search, the glyph legend — is one keystroke away in that key help (⌘/; Esc or a click closes it).

Above the tree a notice strip shows panes that are waiting for you (click → jump there; the same jump is the first action of a folder that already has a running pane) and due follow-ups from ~/.claude/wiedervorlage/. The header on the right carries what the tree cannot: alias, CLAUDE.md headline, git state, last activity, and the last prompt of the session you would resume. Type-to-search also matches session titles.

The top right corner shows your subscription's quota: 5-hour window, week and model week with percentage and a live countdown to the reset (red from 85 %). It refreshes every 30 s via projekte limits --json (change the command in Settings → Erweitert) and stays empty if that command is missing.

The data comes from an external CLI — projekte --json (run through your login shell; change it in Settings → Erweitert). Without it the pane shows a hint and nothing else breaks. The contract (JSON shape) lives with the CLI, not in the app.

Status & notifications

Each pane tracks its session: working (titlebar dot pulses, a floating pill in the pane shows the current tool live) → done / needs input (macOS notification if the pane is unwatched; clicking it focuses and zooms the pane).

• Precise: Claude Code hooks write \e]5522;status=working|input|done|ready[;detail]\a to the pane's tty — detail (e.g. the tool name from a PreToolUse hook) becomes the pill text. ready (from a SessionStart hook) only lifts the home-tile launch curtain.
• Zero-config fallback: the pane detects spinner vs. input box straight from the buffer grid; a fresh hook signal silences it for 10 minutes (hooks win, the fallback self-heals crashed sessions).
• Terminal bell (\a) and OSC 777 (\e]777;notify;Title;Body\a) notify instantly too.

Per-pane accent color

The pane accent (caret, border, titlebar dot) follows the session — passively from Claude Code's /color frame, or explicitly, even through SSH:

printf '\e]5522;accent=#e85e3e\a'   # set this pane's accent
printf '\e]5522;accent=reset\a'     # back to global/adaptive

Appearance — themes, font, padding

LatexTerm renders like Ghostty out of the box: theme Dark+, bundled JetBrains Mono NL at 20 pt, xterm-256 colors, bold stays bold, steady block cursor, 12 px padding. Everything lives in Settings → Darstellung (⌘,). The settings window has six tabs — Allgemein (home tree, Ghostty import), Darstellung, Kacheln (accent, focus), Claude (notifications, prompt text), Formeln, Erweitert (launcher data commands, control socket, reset):

• Themes are Ghostty theme files. Dark+ and Ember (the old warm black) are built in; if Ghostty is installed, all of its ~460 themes appear in the picker. Every surface follows the theme — panes, home pane, launch ring, status pills, formula overlays.
• Font: any installed monospace family or the bundled JetBrains Mono NL (no ligatures on purpose — the renderer is cell-exact and formula overlays sit on cell coordinates).
• Import from Ghostty: one button reads ~/.config/ghostty/config (theme, font, size, padding, cursor blink, bold-is-bright) and previews the changes before applying. Color overrides in the config become the theme „Ghostty (Config)“. Lives in Settings → Allgemein.

The latexterm CLI

Agents (or you) can drive the terminal from any shell — the app listens on a per-user socket (0600 + peer check, see SECURITY.md):

latexterm list-panes [--json]                     # index, UUID, CWD, session state
latexterm new-pane [--cwd DIR] [--exec CMD]
latexterm send [--pane SEL] [--no-enter] TEXT...  # type into a pane (Enter by default)
latexterm zoom [--pane SEL]
latexterm focus [--pane SEL]

Without --pane, the calling shell's own pane is targeted (via $LATEXTERM_PANE_ID). Put the bundled binary on your PATH once:

ln -s /Applications/LatexTerm.app/Contents/Helpers/latexterm /opt/homebrew/bin/latexterm

That closes the loop: a Claude Code session can open panes, start fresh Claudes in them, prompt them, and watch their status — Claude orchestrating Claude.

Install

Grab LatexTerm.app from Releases, unzip, drop into /Applications. The build is unsigned — right-click → Open on first launch, or:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LatexTerm.app

Build from source

Needs Xcode 26+ with the Metal Toolchain (xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain).

open LatexTerm.xcodeproj    # then Cmd+R  (App Sandbox is off on purpose: PTY rights)

# CLI build + tests
xcodebuild -project LatexTerm.xcodeproj -scheme LatexTerm -configuration Release \
  -derivedDataPath .build CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO build
xcodebuild test -project LatexTerm.xcodeproj -scheme LatexTerm \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

Shortcuts

⌘N	new home pane (project launcher)
⌘T / ⌘W	new shell pane (inherits CWD) / close pane
⌘1…9	grow the grid to N panes
⌘⏎	zoom the focused pane (toggle)
⌘F	find in the focused pane
⌘+ ⌘- ⌘0	font size (all panes, persisted)
⌘L	toggle formula overlays
⌘,	settings window (six tabs — theme, font, line spacing, accent, formula scale, notifications …)

Tip — testing formulas: zsh echo mangles backslashes; use printf '%s\n' '$E=mc^2$' or a quoted here-doc.

Known limitations

• A formula whose opener is scrolled off above the viewport (or that wraps past the bottom) isn't detected; multi-line $$ blocks need each delimiter alone on its line.
• Two bare $ in prose (echo $PATH and $HOME) still pair into a false formula — every safe heuristic broke legit math, so math correctness wins.
• Ligatures are off by design (bundled font is the NL variant); a ligature font can still be chosen, but glyphs then may not align with cells.

License

MIT — © 2026 Mats Luca Dagott. Bundles SwiftTerm (MIT, vendored fork at SwiftTermLocal/) and KaTeX 0.16.9 (MIT; fonts under SIL OFL 1.1) and JetBrains Mono NL 2.304 (SIL OFL 1.1) — see NOTICE. The demo above is rendered programmatically with Remotion (demo-video/).