Kaku Free

What it does

Kaku is a free, open-source macOS terminal emulator built on top of WezTerm, purpose-tuned for coding with AI CLI agents. Rather than a blank terminal you have to configure yourself, Kaku ships with pre-set fonts, themes, tab/pane management, and shell integration so it works well out of the box.

What is inside

Kaku bundles keyboard-driven shortcuts for AI command suggestions, natural-language-to-shell-command conversion, and an integrated AI chat panel. It also wires in Lazygit for git operations and Yazi as a file manager, plus zsh completion and syntax highlighting, so the terminal itself becomes the hub for an AI-assisted coding session. Tab and pane layouts are pre-configured so you can keep an agent session, a file browser, and a git view open side by side without hand-rolling a WezTerm config from scratch.

Works with

Kaku doesn't provide its own AI backend — it's the terminal you run other tools inside. Its README calls out Claude (Code), Gemini, GitHub Copilot, and Kimi Code as CLI assistants it's designed to host, alongside Lazygit and Yazi.

How to install or connect

Install via Homebrew:

brew install --cask kaku

Alternatively, download the DMG from the latest GitHub release and drag Kaku into Applications. The project recommends running its shell integration setup after first launch to enable the AI command-suggestion shortcuts.

Maintenance and safety

Actively maintained (~6,000 stars, 308 forks, 1,660+ commits on main) and MIT licensed. Kaku does not handle or relay your AI credentials — you configure and manage API keys for whichever AI CLI you run inside it, so there's no additional data-handling surface introduced by Kaku itself beyond what WezTerm already exposes.

Who should use it

macOS developers who live in the terminal and want a fast, pre-configured environment for running Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI or similar AI coding assistants without hand-rolling their own WezTerm config. It's a good fit if you already like tmux/WezTerm-style workflows and want git and file management built into the same window as your agent sessions, rather than switching apps constantly.