Terminal & AI commands

Real per-folder terminals in Dices with AI that writes, fixes, and explains shell commands — plus reusable runbooks.

Dices gives every chat and folder a real, full terminal (powered by xterm) — not a cut-down shell emulator, but the actual command line for your project. What sets it apart is AI in the terminal: a small action bar that turns plain-language requests into shell commands, fixes failed commands from their own error output, and explains what just happened.

Real terminals, per folder

Each chat and folder gets its own real terminal session. You run anything you’d run in a normal shell — installing dependencies, starting a dev server, inspecting files, running tests — and the terminal behaves exactly as your OS shell does, because it is your OS shell.

Dices is OS-aware throughout:

• On Windows, the terminal runs PowerShell.
• On macOS / Linux, it runs zsh or bash.

This matters for the AI features below: when Dices writes or fixes a command, it writes it in the right dialect for your platform.

AI in the terminal

In the bottom-right of any terminal there’s a small bar with three AI actions. Each one uses your recent terminal output as context, so the AI understands what you’ve been doing and what just went wrong.

Note: The AI types the command into your terminal for you to review. It does not auto-run anything. You always press Enter yourself, so you stay in control of what actually executes.

Ask AI — describe a command in plain language

Press ⌘L (Ctrl L on Windows) or click Ask AI, then describe what you want in plain English. The AI translates your description into the matching shell command and types it into the terminal, ready for you to review and run.

This is ideal when you know what you want but not the exact flags or syntax.

You: find the 10 biggest files

AI types (macOS/Linux):
  du -ah . | sort -rh | head -n 10

AI types (Windows / PowerShell):
  Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File | Sort-Object Length -Descending | Select-Object -First 10

Review it, then press Enter to run.

Fix — repair the last error

Click Fix and the AI reads the recent terminal output, finds the last error, and types a corrected command for you to run.

For example, if npm test fails:

$ npm test
  ✗ Cannot find module 'jest'

[Fix] AI types:
  npm install --save-dev jest

Review the suggested fix and run it when you’re satisfied.

Explain — understand the output in plain language

Click Explain and the AI reads the recent output or error and explains it in plain language in a popover. Nothing is typed into the terminal — this action is purely informational, so it’s the safe way to understand a confusing error or a wall of log output before deciding what to do.

Tip: Use Explain first when you hit an unfamiliar error, then Fix to act on it. Explain tells you why; Fix gives you the how.

Runbooks — saved commands you run from the palette

Runbooks are saved shell commands you can run on demand in the active folder, without retyping them. You trigger them from the command palette: press ⌘K (Ctrl K on Windows) and look for the “Run: …” entries.

Dices ships with sensible defaults, and you can manage your own in Settings.

To use a runbook:

1. Make sure the folder you want is the active folder.
2. Open the command palette with ⌘K (Ctrl K on Windows).
3. Type Run and pick the runbook you want (for example, Run: test).
4. The command runs in that folder’s terminal.

Tip: Add a runbook for any command you find yourself repeating — linting, database migrations, a deploy script — so it’s always one palette entry away.

Where to go next

• Arrange terminals, chats, and previews side by side in Workspace & layouts.
• See every keyboard shortcut, including the terminal ones, in the Keyboard shortcuts reference.