lexicality
4 hours ago
I used to really like Warp, back when it was just a terminal. Then as they went more and more in on AI the actual terminal features became more and more buggy and I ended up having to go back to WezTerm.
Why is every company seemingly trying to re-implement agents themselves rather than making their product work with the existing ones?
hbn
3 hours ago
Yeah I became a fan of Warp when they offered a terminal that treated the input as a normal text input field so I could use my normal keyboard text editing shortcuts.
But I understand that's not a viable business model. I'm back on iTerm2 now cause Warp isn't approved for use at my job (and never would be with all their AI pushing), and I've managed to pound iTerm 2 into something usable enough but I wish every terminal would copy Warp's text input style.
giancarlostoro
3 hours ago
I never used Warp, is the editing similar to PowerShell ISE's editing by chance? Powershell ISE is like a mix of a script editor and a PowerShell UI so you can script out some things or use the terminal directly.
lexicality
3 hours ago
The killer feature that got me into using it was the shell integration. Your prompt, input and command output are entirely separate entities rather than one single stream of text. It's like using a Jupyter notebook for the terminal.
That was also the thing that destroyed it for me, since navigating between history entries started getting more and more unreliable and sometimes clicking on the input box would randomly resize the entire window or move it between screens. I don't entirely know how they managed that one.
hbn
2 hours ago
I can't compare to PowerShell, I've only ever used the Mac version of Warp (the Windows version is relatively new, I can't attest to the quality)
To be more specific about what I was saying, on Mac, in any standard text field I can hold Cmd and hit left or right to jump to the start or end of a line, or hold Option to jump a word at a time, and if I hold shift it'll select text. Option-delete deletes the last word, etc.
I've managed to get iTerm2 to do a lot of this stuff but, for example, Option-shift-left, instead of highlighting the last word, spits out the text ";4D"
theappsecguy
3 hours ago
does anyone know if the above experience and fluid vim-style behaviour can be replicated on something like ghostty? this was the killer feature of Warp imo and I saw no other benefits, but somehow not other terminal has been able to (or tried to) catch up
tomjakubowski
an hour ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it's not necessarily a terminal feature per se. Have you tried setting `vi` mode in your shell? There is a bit of lag going into normal mode in ghostty; maybe ghostty is configured by default to wait for a second keypress when you hit Esc and you can disable that.
Bash (also works in zsh): https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Readline-...
yoyohello13
2 hours ago
The writing was on the wall from the very start of Warp. I can't remember precisely what happened, but years ago when it was first announced there was something that required internet, or telemetry, or an account to use Warp. I noped out right there before I even tried further. It was always going to be bloatware.
FridgeSeal
2 hours ago
They were VC-backed, and had some kind of sign-up/account system for the early invites.
ilivethere
2 hours ago
Same thing for Arc Browser. Sorry, why do I need an account to use a browser? That was a nope for me
dxmachina
2 hours ago
I also felt this way and after staring at the 900MB app package in disbelief started tearing out features using Claude with minimal supervision over the weekend.
It was also a bit of an experiment with a larger Rust codebase, which is outside my usual areas. I did pull out powershell since this was just for personal use on macOS. Been using it today and enjoying it in place of Ghostty, but merely an experiment and learning project:
wuhhh
2 hours ago
Warp was so promising to begin with - super clean and polished UI, AI features that actually made sense, really good dev outreach & PR. Over time, they started cramming more and more AI in everywhere, took over half the input area and you could just see there was no coming back. This is why VC backed software will always stink in the end. I use ghostty now.
cute_boi
an hour ago
I clicked on no ai during onboarding after installation, and I have never seen AI anywhere. I don't think pressing 1 button is really that hard?
wuhhh
an hour ago
The point being I liked the general offering including the AI _to begin with_. Once they went OTT with it it killed the product for me to the point of not wanting it with or without
efficax
4 hours ago
> Why is every company seemingly trying to re-implement agents themselves rather than making their product work with the existing ones?
You can't raise a $50 million series b on making a nice terminal. we already have lots of nice terminals for free
malvim
4 hours ago
We also have a bunch of agents and harnesses for free
dewey
3 hours ago
As always it’s about the packaging not the individual components.
rvz
3 hours ago
Another reason why individual developers do not pay for their tools. This is one of the only professions that does this and they always pass the cost to the employer, who will pay for it until they cut costs.
So the open source code on GitHub is the library that agents need to train on, to do all the economically useful work for 1/100th of the cost or close to free.
That is where it is going and the raised money will be going to the agents.
turblety
2 hours ago
100% agree. I've ended up building my own [1][2] mostly because I got annoyed the agent cli's are building remote control into the agents, instead of into the terminal. I really want the agent cli's to focus on being the best autonomous agents, then let me choose a great terminal that does all the extra.
Another great option (not mine) is Orca [3] and it's a lot more mature. Really nice to use.
lexicality
2 hours ago
I'm glad it works for you, but I've got enough electron apps running on my computer already. I have to run a bunch for work and fully half my cpu is just electron at idle
nekooooo
3 hours ago
when i open a new tab in warp now it defaults to their agent and not my actual terminal. i'm going to have to switch back to something else, do you like wezterm?
lexicality
3 hours ago
I don't dislike it. The keybindings are a bit arcane and having to write the config in Lua rather than having a preferences panel is annoying (though spectacularly powerful), but I've settled in to it and being able to use ctrl-shift-p to control the entire terminal is nice.
Croaky
3 hours ago
This is configurable. In Settings search for "Default mode new sessions". You can select "Terminal", "Agent", or "Cloud Oz".
dcchambers
2 hours ago
> Why is every company seemingly trying to re-implement agents themselves rather than making their product work with the existing ones?
Why does any company do anything? Money, of course.