> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.terminaluse.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is Terminal Use?

> A platform for deploying agents that need tasks, state, and filesystems

Terminal Use is a deployment platform for agents that need three things at the same time:

* long-lived task state
* persistent files at `/workspace`
* production deployment primitives like versions, rollback, logs, and secrets

## Why Terminal Use

Without Terminal Use, teams usually have to stitch together several separate pieces:

* packaging and deploying the agent
* running it in a sandboxed environment
* streaming messages back to users
* persisting state across turns
* moving files in and out of the workspace

Terminal Use brings those pieces together behind one runtime model and one deploy flow, while keeping filesystems as first-class resources separate from task lifetime.

## The Product Model

If you understand these nouns, the rest of the docs become much easier:

| Primitive     | Role                                                |
| ------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| `Agent`       | Your deployed runtime                               |
| `Task`        | One conversation or job running against an agent    |
| `Filesystem`  | Persistent storage mounted into a task              |
| `Project`     | Permission boundary for filesystems                 |
| `Namespace`   | Isolation boundary for compute and storage          |
| `Environment` | Deployment policy such as `production` or `preview` |
| `Branch`      | A branch-specific deployment slot                   |
| `Version`     | One deployable build                                |

See [Core Model](/concepts/core-model) for the full mental model.

## The Two Main Loops

### Build And Deploy

1. Write agent code in Python.
2. Run `tu deploy`.
3. Terminal Use creates a new version and activates it on the resolved branch.

### Run And Interact

1. Create or choose a filesystem.
2. Create a task for an agent.
3. Send events to that task.
4. Read messages, update state, and inspect files written to `/workspace`.

## What The Platform Handles

* Task routing and lifecycle
* Filesystem mount and sync
* Task-scoped system folders such as `/root/.claude` and `/root/.codex`
* Versioning, rollback, and logs
* Environment secret injection
* Runtime sandboxing around your handler execution

## Public Surfaces

Terminal Use has two distinct developer surfaces:

* The Python runtime API, which you use to build agents with `AgentServer`
* The Python and TypeScript client SDKs, which you use to call deployed agents and manage resources from your app

That distinction matters because not every surface has feature parity. If a CLI, Python, or TypeScript example is shown in these docs, it should reflect a real supported surface.

## Where To Start

* New to Terminal Use: [Quick Start](/introduction/quickstart)
* Writing the agent runtime: [Building Agents](/introduction/building-agents)
* Integrating from your app: [Using Agents](/introduction/using-agents)
* Understanding rollout behavior: [Deployments](/concepts/deployments)

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