Troubleshooting: Terminals

Fix common terminal issues — blank output, typing problems, AI agent glitches.

Terminal Opens but No Output When Typing

Symptoms: you press keys but nothing appears in the terminal, or the terminal opens with a blank screen and stays that way.

Possible causes and fixes:

Shell init file error. Your shell startup file (.zshrc, .bashrc, or .bash_profile) may have a syntax error or a command that hangs. Open a plain Bash terminal in 1DevTool and run:

bash
cat ~/.zshrc

Look for obvious errors — a missing closing quote, an undefined variable, or a source command pointing to a file that does not exist. Fix the error in the Env Manager or a text editor, then reopen the terminal.

Wrong terminal type. If you selected a "Claude Code" terminal but the claude CLI is not installed, the terminal will open but the shell will fail to launch the agent. Install Claude Code first (npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code), or switch the terminal type to a plain Bash or Zsh session.

Quick reset. Right-click anywhere in the terminal tab and choose Restart Terminal. This kills the current shell process and starts a fresh one without closing the panel.

AI Agent Doesn't Respond to Input

Symptoms: you type a prompt in the agent terminal but nothing happens — no spinner, no response, no acknowledgement.

The most common cause is that the agent's interface is in a sub-mode where it is not reading your input. For example, if the agent opened a file in a text editor like vim or nano inside the terminal, keypresses go to that editor instead of the agent.

Fixes:

  • Press Ctrl+C once or twice to cancel whatever the agent is doing and return it to its main prompt. Then retype your message.
  • Use the Agent Input Overlay instead of typing directly into the terminal. Press Cmd+I (or Ctrl+I on Windows/Linux) to open a dedicated input box that sends your prompt cleanly to the agent, bypassing any terminal state issues.
  • If the agent appears completely frozen, right-click the terminal tab and choose Restart Terminal to start a new agent session.

Scrollback Is Cut Off After Agent Response

Symptoms: after the agent produces a long response, you scroll up but can only go back a certain distance. Earlier output has disappeared.

Fixes:

  • Click the Expand scrollback button in the terminal header (the arrow icon at the top right of the terminal panel). This temporarily loads more history into the view.
  • For a permanent fix, increase the scrollback limit: go to Settings → Terminal → Scrollback Lines. The default is 10,000 lines. You can raise it up to 100,000. Note that very large scrollback buffers use more memory.

Terminal Shows a "[detached]" Message

You may see a line like [detached (from session main)] appear at the top of a terminal. This is a message from tmux, the terminal multiplexer that 1DevTool uses to keep sessions alive in the background.

It means the display was temporarily disconnected from the running session and then reconnected. This is completely normal — it typically happens when you switch projects, hide and reopen a terminal, or the app is restored from a minimized state. Your session and all running processes are unaffected.

Hidden Terminal Starts a New Session Instead of Resuming

Symptoms: you hide a terminal by clicking away or closing a panel, then reopen it, and the terminal starts fresh — your previous commands and running processes are gone.

Cause: 1DevTool uses tmux to keep terminal sessions alive in the background. If tmux is not installed or is not in your shell's PATH, the session cannot be persisted and restarts from scratch each time.

Fix: install tmux and restart 1DevTool.

  • macOS: brew install tmux
  • Linux (Debian/Ubuntu): sudo apt install tmux
  • Linux (Fedora/RHEL): sudo dnf install tmux

After installing, quit 1DevTool completely and relaunch it. New terminal sessions will now persist when hidden.

High CPU Usage from Terminals

If your machine is running hot or fans are spinning loudly, a terminal process may be consuming excessive CPU.

To identify the source: hover over each terminal tab. An active tab will show a spinning indicator. You can also open the terminal and run top or htop to see which process is responsible.

To stop it:

  • Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to interrupt the running process.
  • Or right-click the terminal tab and choose Kill Process to force-terminate whatever is running inside it.

If the process is a runaway dev server or build tool, it is safe to kill it and restart with your normal start command.