In an exciting development, Microsoft has thrown the gates open to the developer community by making Terminal Chat an open-source offering. This groundbreaking move seeks to amalgamate the creativity of versatile developers and empower them to contribute towards the evolution of AI in a terminal application. Encouraging collaboration and forward-thinking, Microsoft aspires to establish an ecosystem that would fuel innovation, as per the company's official blog post.
Currently accessible in Windows Terminal Canary, Terminal Chat is a user-friendly feature that enables users to interact directly with an AI service. It brings intelligent suggestions to the users such as assistance in interpreting error messages or looking up commands, while keeping the continuity of their terminal session intact.
However, Terminal Chat's functionality in Windows Terminal Canary is contingent on users providing their self-owned Azure OpenAI Service endpoint and key. It currently lacks its proprietary large-language model. Developers keen on utilising Terminal Chat are encouraged to look up the code in the feature/llm branch of the Windows Terminal repository housed on GitHub. Furthermore, the newest version of Windows Terminal Canary, accompanied by Terminal Chat, is up for download from the GitHub repository.
Setting up Terminal Chat in Windows Terminal Canary demands manual addition of an AI service endpoint and key to the Terminal Chat settings. As of now, the Azure OpenAI Service is the sole service supported by Terminal Chat. To acquire the Azure OpenAI Service endpoint and key, users must create and deploy an Azure OpenAI Service resource.
While Microsoft's move to open-source Terminal Chat aligns with their strategy of encouraging user involvement and community collaboration, other platforms like AppMaster take a similar participatory approach to development. With its robust no-code tools, AppMaster empowers customers to visually create comprehensive, resilient and scalable back-end, web and mobile applications, fostering a concoction of innovation and creativity.
