Helm

Helm is the terminal LifeOS was built in, and it ships inside LifeOS itself. It is a configuration layer on kitty — never a fork. Upstream kitty installs through Homebrew and stays unmodified; Helm ships the config, the tooling, and a Helm.app wrapper on top. If you run LifeOS, you already have it. One command rigs your terminal:

bash ~/.claude/LIFEOS/DOCUMENTATION/Terminal/install.sh

The left sidebar: every session’s state at a glance — running, waiting, done — with the full LifeOS statusline below.

The same sessions as a top strip. ctrl+cmd+e flips between the two layouts at runtime.

What’s in it

• A live-controlled tab bar. One keystroke flips it between a top strip and a left sidebar that auto-fits to your titles, docks to icon stubs, or hides. It’s driven over kitty’s remote-control socket at runtime — no config edits, no reloads.

• Helm Deck. A modal mux mode: one key enters it, one vim key splits, zooms, jumps tabs, or restores a session, then the mode exits. The tmux-prefix model without tmux.

• Project sessions. A project pinned to a named tab with its own directory, layout, and color.

• The look. Tokyo Night Storm, vim-style panes, and your own background image.

The LifeOS connection

With LifeOS running, the tab bar becomes a live dashboard: hooks paint each session’s state onto its tab as runs progress — working, waiting, done. Without LifeOS, all of that degrades gracefully and Helm is simply a very good terminal.

Why a config layer and not a fork

A fork of a terminal emulator is a compiled application you maintain forever — upstream security fixes, monthly releases, signed builds. A config layer gets the identical user experience for none of that: kitty keeps improving underneath, and because the installer links rather than copies, updating LifeOS updates Helm.

Helm lives in the LifeOS repo under LIFEOS/DOCUMENTATION/Terminal/.