CMAX Terminal for AI Agents — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] This is CMAX, a new terminal designed to run multiple AI agents in parallel, and it's pretty insane. In this video, I'm going to show you what CMAX is, how to use it, how it differs from TMAX,

[00:12] and how I'm actually utilizing it in my day-to-day workflow. And this might be the best terminal I've ever used. But don't take my word for it. This is Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, saying that CMAX is great and that he uses it for all of his coding.

[00:27] So, what is CMAX? Well, it's a terminal. It's a macOS terminal that's designed for agentic engineering and it's built on top of Ghosty. That's a popular terminal as well, but more specifically it's built on libghosty.

[00:41] This is the core engine that powers Ghosty and it's the part that draws text on screen quickly using the GPU and handles all kinds of different terminal behavior. So what the developers behind CMash did is that they built on top of libghosty.

[00:53] So all this terminal rendering, all this hard stuff, they didn't reinvent the wheel. Instead, they added a nice sidebar, another sidebar, the ability to split horizontally, the ability to split vertically, the right sidebar, multiple different workspaces, integrated

[01:07] browsers inside of the terminal, and so much more. And don't worry, I'm gonna show you all of that later in the video. Now what makes CMUX so damn fast is that it's a native macOS app. It's built in Swift, it's not an electron app, it's super fast, I mean, it might be

[01:22] the fastest terminal I've ever used, and this makes it just a pleasure to use. Oh, and it also works with any CLI agent, so whether that's Cloud Code, whether that is Codex, whether that is PyAgent, or whether that is Terminal Agent, all of them are supported by CMUX.

[01:36] And by the way, all of the resources, terminal commands, everything I reference in this video is available as the first link below the video as a bundle. So if you want it, go get it now, it's completely free. Now, the beauty of CMUX is that it's also fully open source, right?

[01:50] So you can fork it, you can check the source code, but the easiest way to download it is to go to cmax.com and simply click on the download button right here. And this is perhaps the biggest misconception I must destroy now. You don't have to be a developer.

[02:03] In fact, if you aren't technical, you definitely should be using CMAX because it makes using terminal a lot simpler, a lot easier, a lot nicer than the default macOS terminal, which is very clunky and not really helpful.

[02:16] It's very intimidating. It's just empty. and it doesn't make your life easier in any way. So when you install CMAX, just open it by typing CMAX as any other app, and there it is. This is CMAX. So it doesn't look like this, first of all. When you just open it, it looks like this, okay?

[02:29] So you have literally a single pane with the command CMAX welcome, which, by the way, anytime you want to see this, just type in CMAX welcome, and it will show you the main keyboard shortcuts in a single location, right?

[02:42] So all of these are very important. I would recommend learning all of them, but don't worry, we're going to go through them one by one. So first thing you need to understand is on the left, we have the workspaces, right? And if you don't see the sidebar, do command B. Command B to open the primary sidebar.

[02:55] You might notice that on the right, I also have a secondary sidebar, that's command option B. But we don't need this one for now. I'm going to keep it simple for you, okay? If you see me zooming in and zooming out, that's with command minus and command plus. The beauty of Cmax, though, is that it's independent, right?

[03:08] So if you have different ones, so I'm going to do Cmax welcome in a different one, you can see that the zoom is separate for each terminal. This is huge. This is like such a huge quality of life. I can't even explain how many times I wanted this when running multiple code codes or multiple codexes

[03:23] And one of them I just want to zoom in zoom out. It doesn't affect the other one. So that's amazing, right? Now you might be saying okay, how did you do that? How did you do this split? This horizontal split or this vertical split, right? This if you see my video on Tmax, you probably like the fact that it's the terminal multiplexer, right?

[03:41] You can run multiple terminals at once in a nice grid CMUX obviously has the same and it's even more intuitive in fact. The issue inside of PMUX is that it needs command B and D, it's a bit clunky, it's like since

[03:53] 2007, right, so it's 19 year old technology. CMUX is way newer and these keyboard shortcuts are way more intuitive, right. So, again, as you can see, the split to right is just command D. Boom! Just like that, you split your screen in 50-50 and it launches a new

[04:08] terminal. So if you want to quickly launch Flosco, you can do that very effortlessly. Now, if you want to split vertically, you can do command shift D. Boom, there it is. So here I can do like ping 1111 and it's going to run here, and then we can resize very easily

[04:22] by dragging all these lines in between, right? So whatever layout you want to do, if it's a simple project, maybe you only need two agents, three agents, if it's something more advanced, maybe you want a two by three grid of six different agents, right?

[04:34] It's entirely up to you. And what's even better is that the agents themselves can use CMUX to build these grids and to internet these Pains for you, right? So, again, I don't want to get too ahead of myself, as you can see I'm very excited about this tool,

[04:48] and by the way, no, this is not a sponsored video, it's an open source project, and I just found it on Twitter, I like it, and I use it, so that's why I'm making a video about it. Now, one thing you might notice is that the highlighting is also very clean, right?

[05:00] Whatever Pain I click in, you can see that it's immediately highlighted. Now, if it's an agent, so for example here it's called Code, I'm going to do Hi, I'm going to click away, you'll see that it becomes highlighted the moment it finishes, right?

[05:12] Boom! This blue outline, this is not edited in. This is default inside of CMAX. So it really is the terminal for AI agents. All of this convenience, all these things, is built around the idea that you're going to be using AI agents,

[05:25] and you're going to be running multiple of them at the same time, and maybe you're in a completely different workspace, and then on the left, you can see the main sidebar. Okay, the CMAX welcome one was my attention, and you can see that close to its idle. And obviously, we don't want our agents to be idle.

[05:38] We want them to be run. Okay, so the three things you must understand about CMAX are workspaces, paints and services So let me just jump into CMAX to show this, right? Workspaces are the things on the left

[05:50] You can do a new one by clicking plus or if you read the CMAX welcome You can do command N to launch a new workspace. This is an entirely separate workspace I mean this is like an entirely separate project basically, right?

[06:02] So as you can see I have one about my personal tasks, one about the CMAX video, one about global one about developing our internal software, one about unsloth, fine-tuning. So this is just separate stuff right Separate stuff you doing in your life separate types of use cases types of work Different workspaces for different work okay But then the second concept you must understand is pain This is the split section inside of workspace So for example

[06:26] in this CMUX video workspace we have four different pains, right? The Cloud Code, the Codex, the Pi, and the Hermes. But inside of the CMUX welcome workspace, so this is different workspace,

[06:38] we have only two pains, as you can see, and I can recommend W to kill this one, and now we have only one pane. The third concept you should understand is surface. This is a pad inside of a pane, right? So maybe, you know, you have a couple of panes like this, classic 2x2 grid, but then a

[06:53] different surface can be either the terminal or you can click here and it's a browser, right? So you can literally go to youtube.com slash David André, boom, and this is an integrated browser

[07:05] inside of Cmax terminal, which if you put two and two together, this is absolutely huge for developing because the agents can use this router to debug your ad, right? And again, this is a different surface. So, workspaces, panes, and surfaces are the three terms you should understand

[07:22] about CMUX. Now, one of the main things, one of the most beautiful things about CMUX is the notifications, right? This sounds like another big deal because most ads have pretty shit notification systems, but inside of CMUX, it's different. For example, I can ask what code list out all

[07:38] skills you have, then I can go into a different workspace, so back here, CMX Welcome, I can do some work here, you know, whatever, and then watch on the left, right? You can see running.

[07:50] You can see the agent is running, and it's clear what's happening in each workspace, right? Boom! Now I go to small sound, I go to one here, and there's a beautiful keyboard shortcut, which is this one, Command Shift U, jump to latest unread.

[08:03] So what if it's the latest agent that finished running, you can do Command Shift U, and it It jumps straight into that one. So not only did it switch the workspace, it also focused into this code because it's the latest agent that finished running.

[08:17] The notification system in CMUX is so clean and it really will boost your productivity. This is why I'm telling you guys, stop using the default terminal in macOS. Like, there's literally no reason to use it. CMUX is open source.

[08:29] CMUX is free. And it's so easy to learn. Like, so far everything I showed you, you don't have to be a developer at all. Like, this is literally so easy to use, so intuitive. that I wish all of you actually installed. Don't just be a watcher.

[08:42] Don't just be somebody who endlessly consumes content. Start being a creator. Start being an action taker. Setting this up on your MacBook requires like a couple minutes, literally two to three minutes. It's completely free.

[08:54] It's open source, and it's a no-brainer. So, yeah, slow running cloud code inside of the cloud desktop app, God forbid, slow running it inside of the default terminal. Use CMAX. It's basically a combination of tmux, terminal multiplexer, and a VS code, because again,

[09:12] you have this second hidebar, which again, is command option B. So when we are, for example, here, inside of the cmux video, we can see that it's empty, but if you, let's say I do ctrl-c to kill this false code, I do clear, and I do cd one

[09:26] level up, you can see that it changed, because we're in a different directory, and we can see that all these different folders in the directory very clearly now, so if I c into to CMUX again, it changes and it's so fast, it's so fast. So this is, the easiest way to understand it,

[09:39] it's something between an IDE and a default terminal and CMUX, it's just a combination of these into a single app that feels very clean and very native to use. And it feels like the most elegant solution

[09:52] we have right now for running multiplayer agents with parallel, so this is why I'm so excited about it. Now here's where things go to the next level, because you can use these agents, such as Cloud Code, Py, Corel XNMS, inside of CMAX to operate CMAX itself.

[10:06] Let me just show you, because I think it's gonna be simple if I demonstrate it rather than talking about it. So I'm gonna launch Py, and I'm gonna tell it, find the CMAX skill and read it, by the way, I built a skill for myself,

[10:19] which tells the agents everything they need to know about CMAX CLI, how to operate with it, literally everything, right? And by the way, this is gonna be included inside of the bundle, so if you want that skill, click the link below the video, the first link,

[10:32] and just grab it, it's completed free. Now, as you can see, it read this skill, Cmax, and it has complete knowledge of what Cmax is and how it works and how to operate with it. So I'm gonna say, good, now split the current Cmax workspace

[10:47] into a clean two by two grid, okay? So inside of this workspace, we only have one pane, which is this Pi window, but I want a two by two grid, so guys, hands off, it's Pi doing it.

[11:01] Look at this, it's launching the terminal. Okay, let's see if it's supported. Made a mistake. Let's see if it fixes that mistake, because it did one on the side, and then three in a single column. So it needs to figure that out. Okay, it closed it.

[11:13] Back to single full pane, yes. Oh, it's still making a mistake, but it knows it, because it can operate CMAX, and it can make adjustments, and there it is! Two by two grid, very clean.

[11:25] All done by PyAgent, so I can say, good job. Now launch cloud dangerously skip permissions in the other three empty panes.

[11:38] So we can have it operate our agents and manage CMAX, right? So let's see. The PyAgent is basically like an orchestrator. It has perfect knowledge of what CMAX is and the state of the workspace. And there it is. It launched the cloud code.

[11:50] I'm going to say click yes in all of them. them. So this is obviously still very surface level, but we can have each of them build a different thing. There it is, nice! So it launched all of them, I say good, now give

[12:05] each of them a different one page HTML web app to build and telco.code launch it using the CMAX web browser when it's finished. So literally you as a

[12:22] a human who talks to one agent, right? Whatever agent you prefer, could be Hermes agent, could be Pi, like I'm doing right now, could be Cloud Code, could be Codex, could be Agent 0, whatever you prefer. And that agent will be kind of out of the state. And look at this,

[12:35] right So it sends a prompt to all of these with instructions on what to build and then what to do when it finished And now we can just talk to the Pi and the Pi can control these other Cloud codes right So literally it like you as the CEO you be the CEO of your own life and you be

[12:51] talking to a single agent which knows you well and which you know well, right? So I'm using a Pi with Cloud Open 4.8 because all the things are the latest model and there it is, these are already finished. So, now we have these panes and you can see that the notification is highlighted on the

[13:07] latest one that's finished, right? And we have these different apps and it's launching them in a kind of a chaotic way. Make sure the browsers are in the correct panes.

[13:19] So we can have PyFix that, right? Because then it's kind of ugly and the cloud codes launched it in the main pane, but they should be in their own. I think Py can figure that out.

[13:32] Nice! Super clean! Super clean, okay? So obviously these are not like crazy built or anything, but the point is that we have three different cloud codes, right here. Each of

[13:45] them build a different app and everything is running inside of CMAX. And all I need to do is talk to a single main agent, which I chose to be Pi agent, because I don't know, Pi is clean, it's fast, I like it. I'm running Opus 4.8 fast,

[13:59] which by the way you need to switch to 4.8. Now the reason I'm saying you need to switch to 4.8 fast is because it's only only two times more expensive than Opus 4.8 normal, right? So if you look at the pricing, Opus 4.8 is 5 and 25.

[14:15] If you look at 4.8 fast, it's 10 and 50, meaning it's only 2x more expensive. The reason I say only is if we look at 4.7, it is 5 and 25, but if we look at 4.7 fast,

[14:28] it is 30 and 150. It is six times more expensive than Opus 4.7. So there is a huge huge benefit of right now switching all their agents to Opus 4.8 fast, if you

[14:41] can afford it of course, because not only do you get the 2.5x faster inference, but it's no longer six times more expensive, it's just 2x more expensive, and I think that's absolute steal, and for me I instantly switched all of my

[14:53] agents to cloud opus 4.8.5 and it's really huge, it's really a game changer. Now, back to CMAX, because really this is just scratching the surface of what's possible inside of CMAX. Now, to better understand how to actually use this multi-agent system, look at this graphic, right?

[15:08] So you have the orchestrator and you only talk to this one agent, you never even talk to any other agent and the orchestrator, because it has the CMAX skill that I built, which again, if you want that, click the first link below the video and I'll email it to you, it will use that skill to see

[15:23] every other agent and list all the workplaces, check progress by using read screen, these are different terminal commands in the CMAX CLI, and then it gives a new task to each of these agents, right? So it does this in a loop. And so far we've done it on a different project, right, so each of them built a simple app,

[15:39] but the most effective and the most impressive is when they work together on a single project, right? So I'm gonna switch here, in the CMAX video, I'm gonna kill all of these, boom boom boom,

[15:52] In fact, I don't need to do that, I can just do clear, launch a py here, say how many paint in this Cmax workspace, I'm gonna say run clear in all of them, boom, I'm just gonna

[16:04] press and that is the next prompt. Okay good, now make all of them the same width and height, so it's a nice 2x2 grid. Next up I want you to launch Cloud Code with Dangerously Skipped Permissions in the other three empty paints inside of this Cmax workspace.

[16:19] And then I want you to begin building a 3D web app that is for architects, designing interior rooms, interior architecture, and you should split it between these three Cloud

[16:31] Code agents running in the other three panes inside of this CMUX workspace. Make it clear that it should be a very simple web app, just a quick MVP, but make sure to split the development equally between these three Cloud Code agents.

[16:47] So get to work and start using the Cmax skill. Boom! I'm gonna send this off, and we're gonna watch Pi being your orchestrator here. Let me do command option B to close the other sidebar, so we have a bit more space.

[16:59] So first it needs to launch the Cloud Codes, then it needs... Well, it needs to launch them, it's dangerous to skip permissions. Then it needs to somehow divide the project I just crafted, right? And the reason I'm doing this is because I want to test autoscropionate fast, remember?

[17:12] We're using it inside of Pi, but also inside of Cloud Code I'm gonna be using it. So this is BOOM! This never gets old guys, this never gets old. Watching multiple CMAX terminals being ran, and new agents being launched in them.

[17:25] This is beautiful, okay? So, this will test Opus 4.8 on its visual frontend capabilities, because it's common knowledge that OpenAI models, GPT-5.5, even though they're great at large refactors, they suck at frontend.

[17:39] I think Opus 4.8 is the latest and greatest model from Tropic. I want to see how good it is at film and design, and I already know because I did a few tests, and let me tell you, the results were the single most impressive one-shots I've ever

[17:52] seen. Like, incredible. That's why I'm doing this specific example, because I already know the results will be absolutely insane. Opus 4.8 is great at 3D.

[18:04] It understands 3D so well, and it is great at design and front-end. Now, the question is, is it better at massive refactors and deep problematic bugs than GPT-5.5 extra high? Probably not.

[18:17] I mean, look, it came out less than 24 hours ago, so we still need to do more testing. I used it for many hours, but hey, we still need to do a lot more testing. But if we do command shift B, we can see some progress being made.

[18:29] Room designer, we can open that and see our ad being built. Okay, so I'm going to say keep checking on the progress of the three agents. every 20 seconds or so

[18:43] until the app is fully built. So I'm gonna start the loop like this and my client-agent is powered by the OpenRouter API running Opus 4.8 fast mode inside of it, right? So the closed codes are not running fast mode because it would absolutely drain my subscription and in fact if I do slash fast I think I already used it up so let me toggle it on say hey okay so the app is here let me copy that I actually going

[19:08] to switch to break browser and I'm going to launch it here to see it fully okay so this is fully not built all right back table chair sofa this is a very basic obviously

[19:23] but don't judge Opus Corporation based on this because again we told it to be a quick demo these agents ran for like 50 seconds this is not the highest effort right if we do slash effort I've only medium effort in sort of cloud code so

[19:38] what happens when you do the Ultra code right this is a new absolutely beast mode version of cloud code which obviously will eat your limits faster than 100% can eat their lunch, I mean that was a crazy analogy, but what is the result

[19:54] of intracold? It's basically like one step below, above max, right? So this might be like even a bigger update than Open4.8, because 4.8, before then, we had the extra high and max as the highest tier of reasoning efforts, but now Anthropic

[20:08] added ultracold, which uses the dynamic workflow feature, and again, I could make a full video on that, but this is basically the next step of like slash goal, the next evolution where

[20:20] you describe the outcome, and CloudCorp figures out the best way to reach it, and if that means launching multiple different dynamic workflows with dozens or sometimes even hundreds of sub-agents in there, so be it.

[20:32] What is the result of it? The result of it is absolutely incredible. So, I had this demo, which is the same prompt, by the way, so literally the same thing that these agents just did, but instead of running for 50 seconds, I let it run for 20 minutes

[20:46] and the result is crazy. So, let me go to the global here. I'm gonna say kill the other three panes in here. They're kinda useless. And what I wanna do is I wanna go to documents

[20:59] to ls. I wanna go to my code folder and see what we had there. Testing cmax. What is the project in here? Okay, that's not the project I'm looking for. I think it's the blueprint I'll say check Blueprint Studio subfolder and let me know what that app is.

[21:19] Be very concise. If it's the right thing, I'll say, okay good, now open this as a new tab. First of all, launch this and then open this as a new tab inside of my Brave browser. So this is the result of running the Ultra Code feature inside of Cloud Code with Opus

[21:37] 4.18. It ran for a trend list and I'm gonna show you the software. This is crazy. This is the biggest, this is the best one-shot project I've ever seen. Again, this was one-shotted by Opus 4.8 inside of Cloud Code with the Ultra Code.

[21:52] So if you wanna access Ultra Code, which is the digital workflow feature, just do a flash effort, boom, and you switch to Ultra Code right here. And it has all these fancy graphics, I don't know, it feels very like Bread and Circuses.

[22:08] from a small pick, but listen, this feature can build, okay? This was built in a single prompt. Single prompt, no errors, and it worked on first try. We can change

[22:20] the dimensions of the room, look at this. It's a 3D design app, and we can select all of these objects, right? So I'm going to select the plant, we can move it around. This could be like false to companies for interior design. We can do rotation,

[22:35] Rotate this plant, okay, let me zoom in a bit. I'm doing this on my trackpad by the way, so Rotating this plant, I mean, okay, plant is kind of bad example for rotating, but the TV is better

[22:47] for rotating. We can also rescale by clicking scale and you know make it wider, make it taller, make it just bigger overall. We can also add for example another sofa, you know, do a move,

[23:03] move this sofa around boom maybe we want wardrobe okay easy move it to the corner maybe the room should be a bit taller okay we're gonna make the room taller

[23:16] we're gonna make the room a bit deeper okay we're gonna change it to 2d plan so we have the layout from top we're gonna switch this back to 3d do you see this this is incredible this is incredible so Opus 4.8 first of all really really good

[23:31] model and second of all, Cloud Code has been massively upgraded with the Ultra Code feature, which again can easily run for 20, 30, 40 minutes on a single thing and yeah, it will definitely bring through your subscription faster, but man, is the result worth it? So the reason I'm showing

[23:46] you this is because you can run all this instead of CMAX, right? Multiple CMAX terminals running on different projects, like you have one building an app here, you have one building an app here, different workspaces and when it finishes, you'll get a nice notification and again, remember it's

[24:01] keyboard shortcut, command shift U, it will jump to the latest unread instance in front of Cmux so that you can quickly unblock that agent and keep on building. Oh, and by the way, to efficiently close tabs, you can do command W, just like in Chrome,

[24:14] you can do command W to close a tab, and it will close it, right? So when you have multiple different instances, and look how easy it is to create a beautiful grid, right? Just do command D, command shift D, command shift D. Very clean, and we have the nice

[24:29] 2x2 grid, and then you can launch different agents inside of each of them, entirely up to you, right? This is CMAX, okay? It's an elegant terminal for managing AI agents, and since I installed it, I use it every single day,

[24:43] and honestly, I don't see myself switching back, because again, it's free, it's open-source, it's super fast, and it's just a pleasure to use. Especially when you set up the skill for CMAX, right? So I'm going to boom,

[24:56] CMAX skill, CMAX skill teaches the agent how to drag cmax a native macro terminal app it tells it everything window workspace pane surface explain this to agents just like i explained it to you so again if you want this

[25:08] skill it's going to be available inside of the bundle click the first link review it's completely free i'm going to email this to you and yeah thank you guys for watching hopefully you enjoyed this video if you wanted to make more videos on cmax make sure to subscribe and i wish you a wonderful

[25:22] productive week see ya