I have been living in the terminal more than ever lately. Not because I suddenly hate GUIs. The terminal just started feeling like the place where the interesting work happens again. Between Claude Code, Cursor’s agent mode, Windsurf, and whatever Aider fork is hot this week, the old “open IDE, click around, type some code” loop feels… slow. But I am not ready to declare the IDE dead. Not yet. the shift is real, but it is not just about speed The argument for agentic terminals is straightforward. You describe what you want. The agent plans, edits files, runs tests, fixes issues, and hands you a diff or a PR. You stay in one window, keep your hands on the keyboard, and avoid the context switch of clicking through project explorers and sidebar panels. For a lot of the work I do (platform code, infrastructure tweaks, small services, config changes), this flow is genuinely faster once you have decent guardrails. The problem is what happens after the agent is done.…