Version: 1.1
Date: 2025-09-23
Status: Draft
Project Kinesis is a powerful interface that enables a user and an AI agent to share and interact with a single remote terminal session in real-time. The system will leverage the security of SSH and the session-sharing capabilities of tmux to create a seamless collaborative environment. This allows the AI agent to act as a true pair-programmer, operating directly within the user's development environment, running commands, reading outputs, and editing files, all under the user's direct supervision from their own terminal.
The vision is to bridge the gap between AI code generation and practical application, allowing developers to delegate complex terminal-based tasks to an AI assistant that operates with full context, right beside them in the same digital workspace.
- Enable Seamless AI Collaboration: Provide a shared, real-time tmux session for both the user and an AI agent.
- Ensure Secure and Controlled Access: All interactions must be routed through secure SSH connections, and the user must retain ultimate control over the agent's actions.
- Maintain Environment Integrity: The tool should not require installing complex proprietary software on the user's remote server. It should rely on standard, widely-used tools like SSH and tmux.
- Create a "Magic" User Experience: The interaction should feel intuitive and fluid, as if the developer is pair-programming with a highly skilled partner who has direct access to their keyboard.
- Connection Management: Securely storing and managing persistent SSH connection details for the AI agent's connection.
- tmux Session Handling: Automatically creating or attaching to a shared tmux session by issuing tmux commands over a persistent SSH connection
- AI Interaction: The AI can send commands, and the user interacts via their own terminal.
- Command Auditing & Safety: Logging of AI commands and a user-configurable safety mechanism.
- Client-Side Terminal Emulator
- The AI Model Itself
- Remote Server Provisioning
- Advanced tmux Features
- GUI-based File Transfers
- Non-SSH Protocols
- The Developer (User): A software engineer, data scientist, or DevOps professional who works primarily in a terminal on a remote server. They want to leverage AI to automate tasks, debug issues, or write code more efficiently without leaving their environment.
- The AI Agent (The "Cursor"): A language model that can translate instructions into shell commands and needs a way to execute them.
| ID | Requirement | Details |
|---|---|---|
| FR-1 | Secure Connection Setup | User can manage SSH connection profiles for the agent. Credentials must be stored securely. |
| FR-2 | Initiate Collaborative Session | System establishes an SSH connection for the agent and attaches it to a designated tmux session. |
| FR-5 | AI Command Execution | An API must be available for the AI agent to submit strings to be typed into the remote tmux session. |
| FR-6 | AI Contextual Awareness | The AI agent must be able to read the terminal screen and scrollback buffer for context. |
| FR-7 | Command Approval System | An optional "safe mode" to prompt user confirmation for potentially destructive commands. |
| FR-8 | Graceful Disconnection | User can terminate the agent's connection without killing the remote tmux session. |
| ID | Requirement | Details |
|---|---|---|
| NFR-1 | Performance / Latency | AI command execution latency should be under 500ms. Screen-reading for the AI should be near-instantaneous. |
| NFR-2 | Security | All communication between the agent's backend and the remote server must be encrypted via SSH. No unencrypted channels are permitted. |
| NFR-3 | Reliability | The agent should handle network drops gracefully and attempt to auto-reconnect. |
| NFR-4 | Usability | The process of configuring a new connection and starting a session for the agent should be simple and require minimal steps. |
| NFR-5 | Compatibility | Must be compatible with standard OpenSSH servers and tmux version 1.8 or newer. |