
Kaku
๐ A fast, out-of-the-box terminal built for AI coding.
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated May 2026
Kaku is a macOS terminal emulator forked from WezTerm and tuned for AI coding workflows. It ships with sensible defaults, theme awareness, and bundled tools like lazygit and yazi so you do not spend a weekend configuring it before getting work done. MIT licensed, fully free. Maintained by tw93, who also built Pake and Mole.
Install is a download-and-run desktop app. macOS only. No Docker, no config file hell. If you have ever spent two hours getting iTerm2 or kitty to look the way you want, the appeal is obvious. Built-in AI integration plugs into existing coding agents.
Live in a Mac terminal all day and want something pre-tuned for working alongside Claude Code or similar agents, Kaku is worth trying. Compare to Warp if you want the polished commercial option, or to upstream WezTerm if you want every config knob available.
The catch: macOS only, and it is a fork. Upstream WezTerm features land here on a delay, if at all. Solo maintainer too. Tw93 has shipped before so the bus factor is better than most one-person projects, but it is still one.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeFree tier
Fully free and MIT licensed.
Self-hosted
Not applicable, desktop app. Download from the project page or build from source.
Paid
No paid tier.
Free macOS terminal. No paid version exists.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free
- Small team
- free
- Larger team
- free
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About
- Owner
- Tw93 (User)
- Stars
- 5,781
- Forks
- 292
Also by Tw93
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