Custard vs. the terminal
Short answer: your agents were born in the terminal, and Custard keeps them there, under the hood. You get one window that shows what each one is doing.
Side by side.
| Question | Terminal tabs | Custard |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Terminal tabsA tab per agent session, in Terminal, iTerm or Ghostty. | CustardA Mac app where the coding agents you already have work as a team. |
| Agents it runs | Terminal tabsAny CLI agent you install. | CustardClaude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Antigravity. Pick one per job, or mix them. |
| Remembers who's who | Terminal tabsEach session's own history, one tab at a time. | CustardNamed Agents with a job and a face, who remember your decisions across Threads. |
| Several on one job | Terminal tabsMore tabs. You pass answers between them yourself. | CustardGroupies: agents from different makers split the work and check each other. |
| Where it runs | Terminal tabsYour Mac. | CustardOn your Mac, next to your code. No Custard cloud in the middle. |
| Sign-in | Terminal tabsEach agent's own. | CustardNo new account. Codex, OpenCode and Antigravity keep their sign-ins; Claude Code uses your Anthropic API key. |
Checked against each product's own pages in November 2026.
Where the terminal is ahead today.
- It works on any machine, even over SSH, with nothing to install. Custard is a Mac app.
- It runs any CLI agent. Custard runs four: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Antigravity.
Which one's for you?
Stay in the terminal if…
you run one agent at a time, you like it that way, and the scrollback is all the memory you need.
Add Custard if…
you've lost count of the tabs, you've pasted one agent's answer into another, or you want to see what changed without asking.
Every Thread still has its own terminal, so you can drop in whenever you like.
Custard isn't for you yet if you're on Windows or Linux, want AI typing beside you in your editor, or need agents running in the cloud while your Mac is off.
Bring your agents.
Made for the Mac.