⚡ Open Terminal

A lightweight, self-hosted terminal that gives AI agents and automation tools a dedicated environment to run commands, manage files, and execute code — all through a simple API.

AI assistants are great at writing code, but they need somewhere to run it. Open Terminal is that place — a remote shell with file management, search, and more, accessible over a simple REST API.

You can run it two ways:

• Docker (sandboxed) — runs in an isolated container with a full toolkit pre-installed: Python, Node.js, git, build tools, data science libraries, ffmpeg, and more. Great for giving AI agents a safe playground without touching your host system.
• Bare metal — install it with pip and run it anywhere Python runs. Commands run directly on your machine with access to your real files, your real tools, and your real environment, perfect for local development, personal automation, or giving an AI assistant full access to your actual projects.

docker run -d --name open-terminal --restart unless-stopped -p 8000:8000 -v open-terminal:/home/user -e OPEN_TERMINAL_API_KEY=your-secret-key ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal

That's it — you're up and running at http://localhost:8000.

slim and alpine have the same feature set. Slim uses Debian (glibc) for broader binary compatibility; Alpine uses musl libc and is smaller, but some C-extension pip packages may need to compile from source.

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -e OPEN_TERMINAL_API_KEY=secret ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal:slim
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -e OPEN_TERMINAL_API_KEY=secret ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal:alpine
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -e OPEN_TERMINAL_API_KEY=secret ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal:openshift

docker pull ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal
docker rm -f open-terminal

Then re-run the docker run command above.

No Docker? No problem. Open Terminal is a standard Python package:

# One-liner with uvx (no install needed)
uvx open-terminal run --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --api-key your-secret-key

# Or install globally with pip
pip install open-terminal
open-terminal run --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --api-key your-secret-key

The easiest way to add extra packages is with environment variables — no fork needed:

docker run -d --name open-terminal -p 8000:8000 \
  -e OPEN_TERMINAL_PACKAGES="cowsay figlet" \
  -e OPEN_TERMINAL_PIP_PACKAGES="httpx polars" \
  -e OPEN_TERMINAL_NPM_PACKAGES="typescript tsx" \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal

The image includes the Docker CLI, Compose, and Buildx. To let agents build images, run containers, etc., mount the host's Docker socket:

docker run -d --name open-terminal -p 8000:8000 \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v open-terminal:/home/user \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal

For full control, fork the repo, edit the Dockerfile, and build your own image:

docker build -t my-terminal .
docker run -d --name open-terminal -p 8000:8000 my-terminal

Open Terminal can be configured via a TOML config file, environment variables, and CLI flags. Settings are resolved in this order (highest priority wins):

1. CLI flags (--host, --port, --api-key, etc.)
2. Environment variables (OPEN_TERMINAL_API_KEY, etc.)
3. User config — $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/open-terminal/config.toml (defaults to ~/.config/open-terminal/config.toml)
4. System config — /etc/open-terminal/config.toml
5. Built-in defaults

Create a config file at either location with any of these keys (all optional):

host = "0.0.0.0"
port = 8000
api_key = "sk-my-secret-key"
cors_allowed_origins = "*"
log_dir = "/var/log/open-terminal"
binary_mime_prefixes = "image,audio"
execute_timeout = 5  # seconds to wait for command output (unset by default)
file_browser_root = "home"

You can also point to a specific config file:

open-terminal run --config /path/to/my-config.toml

Open Terminal reports file-browser root metadata from GET /files/cwd so clients can hide parent navigation above a friendly starting point.

Set OPEN_TERMINAL_FILE_BROWSER_ROOT to:

This is a UI hint for clients. It does not restrict terminal commands or file APIs.

Open Terminal uses the filesystem it is mounted on. To store workspace files externally, mount that storage into the container:

• Single-user: /home/user
• Multi-user: /home

This can be a Docker volume, Kubernetes persistent volume, NFS/Azure Files mount, or FUSE mount such as blobfuse, s3fs, or rclone.

GET /files/view?path=... always returns the original file by default. Clients that want a rendered preview can add preview=true; when LibreOffice is available the server can return DOCX and PPTX previews as PDF. When rendered preview support is not available, the same endpoint falls back to returning the original file bytes.

Open Terminal integrates with Open WebUI, giving your AI assistants the ability to run commands, manage files, and interact with a terminal right from the AI interface. Make sure to add it under Open Terminal in the integrations settings, not as a tool server. Adding it as an Open Terminal connection gives you a built-in file navigation sidebar where you can browse directories, upload, download, and edit files. There are two ways to connect:

Users can connect their own Open Terminal instance from their user settings. This is useful when the terminal is running on their local machine or a network only they can reach, since requests go directly from the browser.

1. Go to User Settings → Integrations → Open Terminal
2. Add the terminal URL and API key
3. Enable the connection

Admins can configure Open Terminal connections for all their users from the admin panel. No additional services required. Multiple terminals can be set up with access controlled at the user or group level. Requests are proxied through the Open WebUI backend, so the terminal only needs to be reachable from the server.

1. Go to Admin Settings → Integrations → Open Terminal
2. Add the terminal URL and API key
3. Enable the connection

For small, trusted deployments you can give each user their own workspace inside a single container:

docker run -d --name open-terminal -p 8000:8000 \
  -v open-terminal:/home \
  -e OPEN_TERMINAL_MULTI_USER=true \
  -e OPEN_TERMINAL_API_KEY=your-secret-key \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal

Each user automatically gets a dedicated Linux account with its own home directory, so files, commands, and terminals stay in their own workspace and users do not walk over each other's work. Standard Unix permissions keep the workspaces apart in day-to-day use. They do not protect users from each other, and they are not meant to.

Full interactive API documentation is available at http://localhost:8000/docs once your instance is running.

MIT — see LICENSE for details.