Why Frame? Building a Terminal-First IDE for AI Coding

The Problem

When much of your development happens through an AI coding agent, the work shifts toward defining intent, reviewing changes and keeping decisions available across sessions. Frame brings the terminal and that project context into one workspace.

What you actually need is:

• A way to organize and manage your projects
• A real terminal (or multiple terminals) where AI tools run
• Context that persists between sessions
• Task tracking so nothing falls through the cracks
• Quick project switching without losing your place

Staying in the terminal means projects remain disorganized. Context is lost. Decisions are forgotten. There's no standardization across projects.

The Solution: Frame

Frame is not an IDE in the traditional sense. It's a framework — that's where the name comes from. Within Frame, you create "Frame projects" with a standard structure:

• .frame/AGENTS.md — AI instructions that get read at session start
• .frame/STRUCTURE.json — a module map of your codebase
• .frame/PROJECT_NOTES.md — decisions and session notes
• .frame/tasks.json — task tracking

The shared structure gives future sessions a place to find recorded decisions and work in progress. Its usefulness depends on keeping those records current.

Specs turn work into context

A feature’s spec, plan, tasks and outcome stay in the repository alongside project-wide rules and decisions. These documents guide implementation and give the next session a record of why the code took its current shape. Read the spec-to-context walkthrough.

Terminal-First Philosophy

Frame's center is not a code editor — it's the terminal. Even multiple terminals, in a grid layout. This is intentional.

"I need standardization and manageability for my projects. I'm terminal and Claude Code focused. That's why Frame's center is not a code editor, but a terminal."

Frame supports up to 9 terminals simultaneously, with both tab and grid views. You can run Claude Code in one terminal, tests in another, and a dev server in a third — all visible at once.

What Frame is NOT

• Not a code editor — there's a file editor for quick edits, but it's not the focus
• Not a VS Code replacement — if you write code manually, VS Code is still better
• Not optimized for manual coding — it's optimized for AI-assisted development

Target User

Frame is for developers who do daily development with AI coding tools, working terminal-focused. If you find yourself spending most of your time in Claude Code or Codex CLI — and just need a better way to manage your projects and preserve context — Frame is for you.

Check out the GitHub repository to get started.