Dormouse

So many terminals. Which ones need attention? A dormouse knows when to wake.

A multitasking terminal for mice and thumbs (and hotkey wizards too): your terminals and browsers tiled side by side inside VS Code, and the one that needs you lights up.

Try it in your browser first: dormouse.sh/playground.

Tmux with browsers

Soft as a mouse, sharp as a tmux. Split, drag, zoom, and minimize panes with the mouse, or keep your hands on tmux keybinds. A minimized pane becomes a door on the baseboard and keeps running. Dormouse follows your VS Code theme exactly, so it's hard to tell it isn't built in.

Alerts

A pane rings when its program asks for you (BEL, OSC 9, OSC 99, OSC 777), or when a command you started finishes while you're away — no setup. Coding agents are watched by default, so their pane rings when they go quiet; right-click any pane to watch its command too.

Look at a ring without typing and it becomes a TODO; type into the pane to clear both. Rings also show on the VS Code tab, and can be spoken aloud. Command-exit alerts and watching use shell integration (OSC 633 / OSC 133), which Dormouse sets up for zsh, bash, PowerShell, and WSL.

Push notifications you can self-host

Your agent hits a permission prompt after you leave. Dormouse Pocket buzzes your phone, and one drag on its radial menu sends y, n, Esc, or Ctrl+C. The Relay is yours — one Node process behind tailscale serve — and sessions are end-to-end encrypted.

The released extension connects through Dormouse Hosted; a self-hosted Relay takes a build from source. Try the phone interface at dormouse.sh/playground/pocket.

Terminals that know their ports

Six panes running and something's serving :3000. Which one? Right-click a pane to list the ports it's listening on, and open one in a browser pane.

Browsers for you (and your agents)

A browser is just another pane, and your agent drives the same one you're watching:

dor ensure -- pnpm dev              # created surface:3
dor agent-browser open surface:3    # open the port surface:3 is serving

Dormouse drives the agent-browser or Playwright CLI you already have rather than shipping a browser. See the dor agent-browser reference.

Select and copy-paste like you meant

When a TUI grabs the mouse, one click in the pane header takes it back. Every selection opens a copy editor showing exactly what lands on the clipboard: Auto joins the hard wraps back into the line the program printed, Exact keeps them, and e expands a clipped selection to the whole URL, path, or paragraph. Paste a screenshot to hand your agent its path.

Getting started

1. Install from the Visual Studio Marketplace or Open VSX. It also works in Cursor, Windsurf, and other VS Code forks.
2. Open the Dormouse tab in the Panel, or run Dormouse: Focus. Dormouse: Open in Editor opens more as editor tabs.

Keyboard shortcuts

Tap Left Shift, then Right Shift (Left ⌘, then Right ⌘ on a Mac) for command mode; press Enter or click a pane to go back to typing.

The shortcut reference has the rest.

Coding agents

Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity, Warp, and Cursor are watched by default, and resume their conversations after VS Code reloads. Every terminal has the dor CLI on its PATH, so agents can open panes, run a dev server exactly once, and drive browser panes: see the dor reference and the agent skill.

Dormouse Hosted

Optional and paid: a managed Relay so Pocket works without running your own, and an ElevenLabs voice for spoken alarms. See plans and pricing.

Standalone app

Don't settle for your operating system's built-in terminal: Dormouse is also a desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, at dormouse.sh.

Links

Changelog · Issues · Source · Security · Supply chain · by DiffPlug