Theory: terminal apps are closing the agent self-improvement loop because agents can use TUIs more easily than web/desktop/mobile.
Anomaly, which builds OpenCode + OpenTUI), is also doing some really interesting stuff in this space with their custom renderer. And then there's Ink (https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink) which is what Claude Code uses. I also built Ink Web (https://github.com/cjroth/ink-web) to make Ink work in the browser.
The virality of OpenClaw and Claude Code has me wondering if terminals could actually go mainstream (eg used by non-tech users). More thoughts here: https://www.cjroth.com/blog/2026-03-05-terminals-are-cool-ag...
You know what's even easier for AI agents to use than TUIs? CLIs.
My experience has been that agents suck at using TUIs, and are good at using CLIs. I would argue that agents are a reason that TUIs might die in favor of CLIs.
I agree, agents struggle with TUIs. I do think this is easy to fix though (here's an interesting approach: https://github.com/remorses/ghostty-opentui). I think agents will have much better luck with TUIs than browsers.
The more interesting scenario IMO is having apps that are both TUIs AND CLIs where the agent uses the CLI but can pause and show the user a TUI for complex tasks where the user needs to input something.
> I think agents will have much better luck with TUIs than browsers.
I’m very skeptical. Why would you think that? TUIs inherently don’t provide programmatically accessible affordances; if they have any affordances at all, they’re purely visual cues that have unstandardized and of varying quality.
Compare that to the DOM in a browser where you’ve got numerous well-understood mechanisms to convey meaning and usability. Semantic HTML and ARIA roles. These things systematically simplify programmatic consumption.