Open source alternative to Warp
Warp rebuilt the terminal around blocks and put an agent inside it, and the result is faster to use than a plain shell for most people. Alternatives get searched for two reasons: the terminal is closed source and, for a long time, required an account to run; and an agent inside a terminal still leaves you reading its output to work out what it changed.
Closed source.
macOS, Linux, Windows.
Free tier, then a per-seat subscription with metered AI requests.
Why people replace Warp
A closed-source terminal
The terminal is where every credential you own gets typed. Plenty of engineers want to read the source of that program.
Metered AI requests
The agent runs against Warp's quota rather than your provider account.
Output is not a diff
Scrollback shows what the agent said it did. Working out what it actually changed means going back to Git.
Nothing is recorded
The session that produced a change is gone when the window closes.
The layer above your agents
A terminal you keep
Aura is not a terminal replacement. It has one built in for driving agents, and it works with the shell and terminal you already use.
The change, not the transcript
When an agent finishes, Aura shows what moved in the code as a semantic diff, with a verdict against the goal.
The session is kept
Every agent run is recorded with its intent, its goal and its diff, and stays searchable long after the window is closed.
Your own provider account
Aura drives the agent CLIs you install, using your credentials and your rate limits. Free and Apache 2.0.
Aura is not better at everything
- Warp is a better terminal than the one inside Aura, and it is not close. Keep it.
- Its command search, blocks and workflows have no equivalent here.
- Warp ships on Windows today.
The other open-source options
If Aura is the wrong shape for what you need from Warp, these are the projects worth reading first.
Ghostty
MIT, GPU-accelerated, native on macOS and Linux. The usual answer to this question.
WezTerm
MIT, cross-platform, configured in Lua, with multiplexing built in.
Alacritty
Apache 2.0, minimal and fast. Pair it with tmux.
opencode
If the agent is the part you want, this is an open-source one that runs in any terminal.
How the move actually goes
- 01Pick an open-source terminal if that is the part you are replacing: Ghostty, WezTerm or Alacritty.
- 02Install the agent CLI you want to run in it.
- 03Open the repository in Aura and drive the agent from there, or from your terminal with the CLI.
- 04Read the semantic diff after each run instead of scrolling back through output.
- 05Log the intent before committing so the session stays attached to the change.
Aura and Warp
Is Aura a terminal?
It has one, for running agents where their output sits next to the diff. It is not trying to replace Warp, Ghostty or your shell.
Does it need an account?
No. Local use needs no sign-in at all.
Which agents can it drive?
Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, opencode, Amp and others, from one window and against one history.
Does it work over SSH?
Yes. The CLI is the whole engine and runs headless on a remote box.