Tado

A macOS app that turns your todo list into a terminal multiplexer for AI coding agents.

What It Does

Type a task, press Enter, and Tado spawns a terminal running Claude Code or Codex with your task as the prompt. Every terminal lives as a tile on a pannable, zoomable canvas. Agents can even message each other through a built-in IPC system.

Features

• Projects -- organize todos under a directory; agents are auto-discovered from .claude/agents/ and .codex/agents/
• Teams -- group agents into named teams for coordinated multi-agent work
• Dispatch Architect -- write a markdown brief and an architect agent designs a multi-phase plan, creates per-phase skills, and auto-chains the execution
• Model selection -- pick the exact Claude or Codex model per session (Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4, GPT-5.3-Codex, etc.)
• Random tile colors -- 15 curated terminal themes (Claude, macOS classics, Solarized, Dracula, Nord, Monokai, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox)
• Harness display knobs -- Claude no-flicker mode, mouse, scroll speed; Codex alt-screen toggle
• Todo-driven terminal spawning -- one terminal per task, powered by the AI agent of your choice
• Pannable/zoomable canvas -- drag, scroll, and zoom across all your running agents
• Resizable and moveable tiles -- drag edges to resize, drag title bar to reposition
• Claude Code and Codex support -- switch engines from Settings
• Mode and effort settings -- configure permission mode and thinking/reasoning effort per engine
• Prompt queueing -- queue follow-up prompts that auto-send when the agent goes idle
• MCP Server -- tado-mcp exposes A2A tools to any MCP-compatible AI agent; auto-registered on launch
• Agent-to-agent IPC -- agents can discover peers, read output, broadcast, and send messages via CLI tools
• Pub/sub topics -- tado-publish, tado-subscribe, tado-unsubscribe for topic-based messaging
• Project bootstrap -- one-click injection of A2A docs and team structure into any project's CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md
• tado-deploy -- agents can spawn other agents on the canvas programmatically; engine auto-detected from agent source
• Multiline input with renaming -- grow-to-fit editor with Cmd+Enter submit; right-click todos to rename
• External CLI tools -- message any Tado session from an outside terminal
• Forward mode -- route your next typed input directly into a specific terminal
• Done and Trash lists -- move completed or discarded todos out of the main list
• Activity detection -- cursor monitoring detects when an agent is idle (5-second threshold)
• Persistent state -- todos, projects, teams, and settings survive restarts via SwiftData
• Session sidebar -- live status indicators for all running sessions

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
• Swift 5.10+ / Xcode 15.3+
• Claude Code CLI and/or Codex CLI installed and available on your PATH

Building

git clone https://github.com/ocque41/tado.git
cd tado
swift build
swift run Tado

No Xcode project is included. The project uses Swift Package Manager as its build system. You can also open Package.swift directly in Xcode.

Usage

1. Launch Tado and type a task in the input field (multiline supported, grows up to 8 lines)
2. Press Cmd+Enter (⌘↩) -- a terminal tile spawns on the canvas with your AI agent working on it
3. Press Ctrl+Tab to cycle between Todos, Canvas, Projects, and Teams
4. Shift+Scroll to zoom the canvas, Scroll to pan
5. Click the arrow icon on a todo row to enter forward mode (your next input goes to that terminal)
6. Press Cmd+B to open the sidebar and see all session statuses
7. Press Cmd+M to open Settings and change the AI engine or grid layout

IPC (Inter-Process Communication)

Agents running inside Tado can communicate with each other:

Command	Description
tado-list [--project X] [--team Y]	List all peer sessions, optionally filtered by project or team
tado-read <target> [--tail N] [--follow] [--raw]	Read terminal output from a session
tado-send [--project X] <target> <message>	Send a message to another session (by name, grid coords like 1,1, or UUID)
tado-deploy "<prompt>" [--agent N] [--team T] [--project P] [--engine E] [--cwd D]	Spawn a new agent session on the canvas
tado-broadcast [--project X] [--team Y] <message>	Send a message to all matching sessions
tado-recv [--wait]	Read messages from the inbox (--wait polls for up to 30 seconds)
tado-publish <topic> <message>	Publish a message to a topic
tado-subscribe <topic>	Subscribe the current session to a topic
tado-unsubscribe <topic>	Unsubscribe from a topic
tado-topics	List all active topics and their subscribers
tado-team	List teammates in the current session's team

From any external terminal, CLI tools are installed to ~/.local/bin. The tado-mcp MCP server is also auto-registered so MCP-compatible agents can use Tado tools natively.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+Enter	Submit todo / send message
Right-click on todo	Context menu (Rename, Mark as Done, Move to Trash)
Ctrl+Tab	Cycle through Todos, Canvas, Projects, Teams
Cmd+M	Open Settings
Cmd+B	Toggle Sidebar
Cmd+D	Done list
Cmd+T	Trash list
Shift+Scroll	Zoom canvas
Scroll	Pan canvas

Architecture

tado-mcp/         TypeScript MCP server (list, read, send, broadcast tools)
Sources/Tado/
  App/          TadoApp (entry point), AppState (UI state)
  Models/       TodoItem, TerminalSession, AppSettings, CanvasLayout, IPCMessage, Project, Team, AgentDefinition, TerminalTheme
  Services/     TerminalManager, ProcessSpawner, IPCBroker, AgentDiscoveryService, DispatchPlanService
  Views/        ContentView, TodoListView, DoneListView, TrashListView, CanvasView, ProjectsView, TeamsView, TerminalTileView, SidebarView, SettingsView, DispatchFileModal

State management: AppState and TerminalManager are @Observable singletons injected via SwiftUI environment. SwiftData persists TodoItem, Project, Team, and AppSettings.

Terminal bridge: TerminalNSViewRepresentable wraps SwiftTerm's LocalProcessTerminalView into SwiftUI. All four page views stay mounted simultaneously via opacity toggling, so terminal processes are never destroyed when switching views.

Agent discovery: AgentDiscoveryService scans a project's .claude/agents/ and .codex/agents/ directories for .md agent definition files, making them available for team assignment and todo routing.

Dispatch Architect: DispatchPlanService orchestrates the multi-phase planning workflow. The architect agent reads .tado/dispatch/dispatch.md, designs phases, creates per-phase skills, writes plan.json and phases/<order>-<id>.json, and injects "Dispatch System" awareness into the project's CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md. Phase agents auto-chain to the next via tado-deploy.

IPC: IPCBroker manages a file-based message queue under /tmp/tado-ipc-<pid>/ with per-session inboxes, outboxes, and a pub/sub topics directory, watched via DispatchSource.

MCP Server: tado-mcp/ is a TypeScript MCP server built on @modelcontextprotocol/sdk that exposes tado_list, tado_read, tado_send, and tado_broadcast as MCP tools. Auto-registered in ~/.claude.json on app launch.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT -- Copyright (c) 2026 Cumulus