Kimi Code, Moonshot AI's open-source terminal coding agent, just shipped a batch of quality-of-life upgrades that collectively push it closer to being a full terminal replacement. The headline features are Shell Mode, background task management, remote web UI access, and multi-directory workspaces. None of these are flashy model improvements, but together they remove the friction that forces you to constantly context-switch out of the agent session.
Shell Mode: the terminal inside your terminal
The new shell mode lets you run terminal commands directly without leaving the conversation. Type ! in the input box to enable it, and the command output is visible to the AI.
This means you can authenticate with external tools, inspect build output, or run a quick script, and Kimi immediately has that output in context for the next turn.
- Enter shell mode: type
!in an empty input box, or paste any command starting with! - Exit shell mode: press
BackspaceorEscin an empty input box; submitting a command also exits automatically -
For long-running commands, press
Ctrl+Bto move them to the background. For example, you can run!gh auth loginto sign in to the GitHub CLI without opening a new terminal, so Kimi can use
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