What Tortie is
Tortie is a calm agent multiplexer with familiar IDE features for macOS. It keeps coding-agent sessions across projects without tying their lifetime to the app window.
One window for agent work
Tortie launches coding-agent command-line tools and ordinary shells that are already available on your Mac. It keeps each session named and attached to a project, then puts files, search, editing, source control, agent context, and conversation review beside it.
| Tortie provides | What that means |
|---|---|
| Project workspace | Each folder is a project tab with its own sessions, file tree, search, editor, and Git state. |
| Durable sessions | A private tmux server keeps agents and shells running when the Tortie window closes. |
| Work review | Catch Me Up, attention signals, diffs, history, and saved output help you return without supervising every terminal. |
| Inspectable agent context | The Context view shows the skills, MCP servers, hooks, plugins, and instruction files an agent will load. |
| Remote projects | Early support opens folders and runs agents on another Mac over SSH, with writes disabled until you approve a root. |
Behind the name
Tortie.sh is a name and a shell joke. A tortie is a tortoiseshell cat; .sh is the familiar suffix for a shell script. The name points to both the cat in the mark and the shell sessions Tortie keeps alive.
Tortoiseshell cats have a reputation for being deeply loyal, opinionated, and vigilant. Tortie is built with the same character: it stays with your work after the window closes, keeps sessions firmly named and scoped, and watches quietly for the moment an agent needs you.
Built from focused parts, not a VS Code fork
Tortie is an Electron application, not a VS Code fork. It does not ship VS Code's workbench, extension host, settings model, or product shell. Monaco Editor is a standalone library also used by VS Code. It gives Tortie a proven editing surface without making VS Code the application.
| Surface | What Tortie uses | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal | xterm.js, node-pty, and a private tmux server | True terminal behaviour with process lifetime separated from the app window. |
| Editing | Monaco Editor | Mature editing, find, selections, undo, syntax support, and a lazy-loaded editor surface. |
| Diffs and files | Pierre Diffs and Pierre Trees | Virtualized diffs and a path-first explorer with Git state. |
| Search and symbols | ripgrep and Tree-sitter | Fast content search and syntax-aware symbol navigation. |
| Markdown | react-markdown and Shiki | Structured previews with consistent syntax highlighting. |
| Source control | Your system Git CLI | The same configuration, credentials, hooks, and signing you already use. |
Who Tortie is for
Tortie is for developers who use terminal coding agents as part of normal repository work and need to keep several threads understandable over time. If your agents currently live in VS Code, Cursor, or separate terminal windows—and changing projects means hunting for the right window or losing work to a restart—this is the problem Tortie is designed to solve.
- You run more than one agent session or project at a time.
- You want sessions to survive an app quit, crash, or update.
- You need to review files, diffs, branches, and agent conversations beside the terminal.
- You want to see which configuration and context an agent will actually load.
- You prefer named sessions and explicit recovery over a live supervisor dashboard.
What Tortie is not
- Tortie is not a coding agent or model. It launches agents you install and choose.
- Tortie is not a cloud execution service. Local sessions run on your Mac; remote sessions run on a machine you add.
- Tortie is not an autonomous supervisor, task queue, or activity feed. It raises work that needs you and stays quiet otherwise.
- Tortie is not a replacement for Git. Its source-control view runs normal Git operations against your repository.
- Tortie is not a general remote-control API. The optional
tortieshell command only asks the app to open a folder. - Tortie is not a tmux interface you must learn. tmux is the private durability server behind Tortie's project and session language.
The daily loop
- Open a project. Choose a local folder, clone a repository, or open an approved folder on another machine.
- Start named sessions. Launch the agents or shells the project needs and arrange related sessions in splits.
- Work in one place. Move between sessions, files, search, source control, and Context without changing project scope.
- Leave when you need to. Quit Tortie without ending live local sessions.
- Return with context. Reconnect to live work, review Catch Me Up, or restore saved sessions after a reboot.
When to choose another tool
Choose a full IDE if you need its language extensions, debugger, or notebook environment as the centre of your work. Choose a cloud agent platform if you need managed machines or unattended jobs that continue after your own hardware is offline. Choose an orchestrator if you want automatic task decomposition, worktree assignment, or a supervisor queue.
Tortie is strongest when the unit of work is a project with several durable, human-directed agent sessions.