# Microsoft Intelligent Terminal 0.3 adds sidebar, headless mode, and agent session management

> **Key takeaway:** Microsoft's open-source terminal emulator introduces a vertical sidebar for managing AI agent sessions alongside traditional tabs, plus headless background execution for long-running tasks.

**Published:** 2026-11-04T22:00:48+00:00 
**Source:** Microsoft Command Line & WSL Blog 
**Category:** bigtech-foss 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/microsoft-intelligent-terminal-03-adds-sidebar-headless-mode.html 

## Summary
Microsoft released Intelligent Terminal 0.3, the largest update since the project's launch, introducing a vertical sidebar that unifies tab and agent session management in a single interface. The sidebar displays live agent status, supports pinning, and nests split panes under their parent tabs while maintaining familiar interactions like drag-to-reorder and right-click menus. Users can switch back to horizontal tabs through settings or the context menu, and the sidebar can be resized or collapsed with Ctrl+Shift+S.

The release also adds customizable rich tab fields showing status, working directory, or Git information; global search across open tabs and closed agent sessions; filtering to show only agent sessions; and headless mode that keeps selected tabs running after the terminal window closes. Intelligent Terminal now auto-detects installed agent CLIs such as GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude to create profiles in the new tab menu. The software remains in experimental status and is distributed through the Microsoft Store, winget, and GitHub releases.

## What changes in Intelligent Terminal 0.3
- **Sidebar architecture:** Replaces the classic horizontal tab bar with a resizable vertical panel that lists both shell tabs and agent CLI sessions together, with collapsible sections for recent agent sessions across all terminal windows.
- **Agent lifecycle visibility:** Live status indicators show whether an agent is working, awaiting user input, or requesting tool execution without requiring the tab to be focused; headless mode decouples session lifetime from window lifetime for background execution.
- **Session search and filtering:** Global search indexes both currently open tabs and historically closed agent sessions across windows; dedicated filters allow narrowing to agent-only views or surfacing recent cross-window sessions with metadata including working directory and relative timestamp.
- **Auto-discovery of agent CLIs:** The terminal scans for installed agent command-line interfaces and automatically generates launch profiles, reducing manual configuration for tools like GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude.
- **Customization and theming:** Tab information fields are user-configurable with up to two simultaneous display slots chosen from agent status, current working directory, or Git repository/branch/change data; acrylic material theming is default for the sidebar with solid background option available.

## Why it matters
For developers working with multiple AI coding assistants and traditional shells simultaneously, the unified sidebar reduces context-switching overhead and provides persistent visibility into agent state across terminal instances. The headless mode addresses a genuine workflow pain point where long-running agent tasks or builds previously terminated on window close, making this particularly relevant for remote development and CI-adjacent local workflows on Windows and WSL environments.