Docs/Advanced: command line/Terminal Support

Terminal Support

This page is for running Dynamo from the command line. The Dynamo Engine app needs none of it.

On the command line, Dynamo uses the Catppuccin Mocha color palette and Nerd Font glyphs.

Recommended Terminals

TerminalColorsNerd FontsNotes
Ghostty24-bitAssumed onRecommended for macOS
Windows Terminal24-bitAssumed onRecommended for Windows
iTerm224-bitAssumed on
Kitty24-bitAssumed on
WezTerm24-bitAssumed on
Alacritty24-bitAssumed on
VS Code Terminal24-bitOn (macOS only)
macOS Terminal.app256-colorAssumed onLimited palette; set DYNAMO_NERD_FONTS=0 if icons show as boxes
tmux24-bit with COLORTERM=truecolorAssumed onOtherwise 256-color

Color Modes

  • ●24-bit true color — Full Catppuccin Mocha palette
  • ●256-color — Closest approximations (macOS Terminal.app)
  • ●No color — Set NO_COLOR=1 to disable all colors

Nerd Fonts

Dynamo assumes Nerd Fonts on macOS, Windows Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, WezTerm, Kitty, Alacritty and tmux, and uses plain Unicode elsewhere. Override with:

bash
export DYNAMO_NERD_FONTS=1   # Force on
export DYNAMO_NERD_FONTS=0   # Force off (Unicode fallback)

Tab Title

Dynamo puts an icon and the session name in your terminal's tab title, so you can tell what's happening from the tab strip:

  • ●◇ idle — you're up to date
  • ●◇ ◈ pulsing — the model is responding or running tools
  • ●◆ attention — a response finished and is waiting for you

The ◆ clears when you send your next message. Title updates use standard terminal escape sequences and are harmless on terminals that don't support them.

No inline images. Dynamo doesn't draw images in the terminal. When read_file opens an image it's sent to a vision-capable model for analysis, not rendered as pixels in your scrollback.

Troubleshooting

  • ●Colors look wrong? — Check that your terminal supports true color
  • ●No colors at all? — Check that NO_COLOR isn't set in your shell. In tmux or over SSH, try: COLORTERM=truecolor dynamo
  • ●Icons missing? — Run dynamo setup --install-fonts, or set DYNAMO_NERD_FONTS=0 for plain Unicode
  • ●Unicode broken? — Ensure your terminal uses UTF-8 encoding
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