Shell: the web page is a command box, not a terminal

Kept open and narrowed, because most of the original ask has landed.

What shipped

service/shell/ — a real machine per account: a container with a filesystem, a package layer (equip.go), idle shutdown, and SSH into it (ssh.go, with a PTY, window resize, and keys managed at /shell). ssh asim@micro.mu puts you in a login shell in your own box. It was sandbox and is shell now, because the service is named for the domain.

So: filesystem ✅, SSH ✅, agents-in-a-box ✅ (agent/work runs there).

What is left, and it is the mobile half

The web page at /shell is an <input class="sbx-cmd"> and a <pre> of the output — one command, one response, no session. That is not a terminal:

• no interactive programs (vim, top, anything that reads a key at a time)
• no persistent shell state — cd does not stick between commands
• no scrollback, no ANSI colour, no resize
• no Ctrl-C

Which means the original complaint stands exactly where it was raised: on a phone there is still no usable terminal. SSH covers the desktop case; a phone is where a web terminal was the point.

What it needs

• a WebSocket to the PTY that ssh.go already opens — the server half exists, it just has no browser client
• a terminal emulator in the page. xterm.js is the obvious one and is a dependency question: CLAUDE.md says an embedded file lives with the package that owns it, so it would be service/shell/xterm.js rather than a CDN
• a mobile keyboard story, which is the actual hard part: Tab, Ctrl, arrows and Esc do not exist on a phone keyboard, so they need on-screen keys

Why it is worth it

agent/work runs tasks in that box. Being able to watch one and intervene is the difference between a machine you own and a machine you submit jobs to.