Sendoff

A prompt-first editor for terminal coding agents — fast, local, keyboard-driven.

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_{Draft the prompt → Ctrl+Enter → it arrives in the tmux pane running your agent as a single block, already submitted.}

Sendoff is a minimal text editor built around one workflow: write a prompt in a real editing surface, then fire it straight into the terminal agent you're already running. It was born from a concrete annoyance — the cramped input box in Claude Code and the awkward scrollback in long tmux sessions. Sendoff gives the prompt room to breathe before it's sent.

No backend, no API keys, no telemetry, no network calls from the editor at all.

Not a pipeline builder, a knowledge base, or a code editor — by design.

Download

Grab the AppImage from the latest release:

chmod +x Sendoff_*_amd64.AppImage
./Sendoff_*_amd64.AppImage

Needs glibc ≥ 2.35 — Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Fedora 36+, Arch. It is built in a container on Ubuntu 22.04 for exactly that reason; an AppImage bundles its libraries but not glibc, so building on a rolling distro would produce a file that only runs on rolling distros.

It expects a normal desktop system for the libraries AppImage deliberately does not bundle — graphics and text shaping: libGL, libEGL, libgbm, libdrm, libX11, libX11-xcb, libxcb, libfontconfig, libfreetype, libharfbuzz, libfribidi, libexpat. Any Linux desktop has them; a bare container does not. Everything else, WebKitGTK included, travels inside the AppImage — verified by running it on a container with zero webkit and zero GTK packages installed, where it gets all the way to "Failed to initialize GTK", i.e. it stops at the missing display rather than at a missing symbol.

⚠️ Don't mix the AppImage and a source build on the same machine. Both use the same data directory, but the AppImage bundles WebKitGTK 2.50 while a current distribution ships 2.52+. From 2.52 on, WebKit writes IndexedDB in a new metadata format and silently upgrades the database the first time it opens it — after which the AppImage can no longer read it, and shows an empty editor plus a storage error. Your data is intact and is never overwritten: when Sendoff cannot read, it stops writing altogether. Go back to whichever build you were using before and your tabs are there. The incompatibility is one-way — newer WebKit reads older databases, not the other way round.

No auto-update — to upgrade, download the new AppImage, or build from source and use ./update.sh.

The core loop

flowchart LR
    R["Sendoff<br/>draft the prompt"]
    T["Bound target<br/>Herdr · Orca · tmux"]
    P["Reference panel<br/>Ctrl+R"]

    R -->|"Ctrl+Enter"| T
    T -->|"paste the reply"| P
    P -->|"keeps it in view"| R

Loading

Draft the prompt → Ctrl+Enter sends it to the terminal the tab is bound to → keep the agent's reply pinned in the reference panel while you write the next one.

Features

Prompt workflow

• Send the prompt (Ctrl+Enter) — push the current buffer into the terminal the tab is bound to, without leaving the keyboard. Three kinds of target are supported: Herdr agents (0.7 or newer — pane ids changed shape after 0.6 and the older form is rejected by the command allowlist), Orca ADE agents, and plain tmux panes. Multi-line prompts arrive as one block and are submitted once.
• Target picker (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) — one list, sectioned by source, so you pick an agent or a pane by name instead of relying on whatever is focused. A source that is not running simply has no section.
• Tab binding (Ctrl+Alt+B / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B) — pin a tab to one target; the status bar shows the live binding so Ctrl+Enter always lands in the right place. Bindings store a stable descriptor and resolve the live handle on every send, so they survive restarts. When a binding is ambiguous, Sendoff asks instead of guessing — a prompt in the wrong agent is worse than an extra click.
• Live agent status — the status bar shows what the bound agent is doing. It stays a quiet dot while the agent works, and speaks up only when the agent is blocked waiting for your answer.
• Trigger phrases (Ctrl+K) — reusable prompt fragments. By default they go in front of the whole prompt (they are usually role prefixes); a setting switches insertion to the caret instead.
• Slash menu (/) — the only trigger with no modifier at all. Typing / at the start of a line or after a space opens an inline list: your trigger phrases first, then markdown scaffolding (code block, headings, lists, horizontal rule). It stays out of the way — a slash inside a word (src/lib, 12/08) is just text, Escape dismisses that slash for good, and phrases picked here always land at the caret.
• Images by path — paste a screenshot (Ctrl+V) or pick a file from the palette, and Sendoff drops its absolute path into the prompt. Coding agents read images from a path, so this is what actually reaches them: the terminal carries text, not pixels. A pasted image is written into Sendoff's own data directory; a picked file is referenced where it already lies, never copied.
• Reference panel (Ctrl+R) — a resizable, persisted side panel to keep an agent's reply visible while you compose the follow-up.

Tabs that scale

• Tabbed editor with drag-and-drop reorder; survives restarts (75+ tabs daily). Moving a tab never depends on a navigation cluster: Ctrl+Shift+, / Ctrl+Shift+. work on 60% keyboards where PgUp/PgDn live on a function layer.
• Tabs auto-name themselves from the first line; empty tabs auto-clean.
• Workspaces (Ctrl+Shift+W) — group tabs by project; the tab bar shows only the active workspace, and pins are per-workspace. F2 opens rename and delete inside the switcher itself — deleting a workspace moves its tabs to the next one instead of discarding them, and says so before you commit.
• Tab groups (Ctrl+G) — colour-coded, named runs inside a workspace; collapse a group to a single chip, drag it as a whole, or act on several tabs at once with Ctrl+click. Collapsing only hides — it never closes anything.
• Tab switcher (Ctrl+T) with a live content preview.
• Global tab search (Ctrl+Shift+D) — full-text search across every tab, deliberately cross-workspace (the escape hatch out of isolation).
• Pin tabs (Ctrl+P) — keep important drafts pinned at the front of the tab bar.

Text tooling

• Markdown editing — Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I wrap (and unwrap) the selection or the word under the cursor; Tab / Shift+Tab indent and nest list items; Enter continues lists, numbering, checkboxes and blockquotes, and clears the marker on an empty item; brackets, quotes and backticks close around a selection, and a third backtick opens a fenced code block.
• Find & Replace with a real-time highlight overlay.
• Bulk find & replace with a diff preview before applying.
• Replace presets — reusable bulk-replacement rule sets (the original use case: tone conversion, e.g. You/Your → collaborative We/Our).
• Markdown preview, distraction-free mode, command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

Under the hood

• Autosave to IndexedDB — close and reopen, everything's there. There is no manual save: Ctrl+S only flushes the pending write immediately.
• Closing a tab deletes nothing: it moves to an archive that survives restarts and comes back with Ctrl+Shift+T.
• Native file dialogs, drag-and-drop files into the editor, file import/export (.txt, .md), plus full backup export/import.
• Custom title bar with window controls; follows the native window theme. Light / dark / system, and a configurable editor font (Ctrl+,).
• Exactly one instance runs. Launching again exits immediately instead of opening a second window. Two copies on one database would quietly eat each other's work — a save rewrites the whole snapshot, so the instance with the staler view wins and deletes whatever the other one created. The second launch does ask the existing window to come forward, but Wayland compositors ignore an activation request from a process you did not just interact with, so nothing visibly happens there — measured on niri, both from the AppImage and a source build.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every shortcut is rebindable — open the reference with Ctrl+/ and click a chord to record a new one.

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+Enter	Send buffer to the bound terminal (Herdr / Orca / tmux)
Ctrl+Shift+Enter	Target picker (Herdr / Orca / tmux)
Ctrl+Alt+B / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B	Bind / unbind tab to a terminal
Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I	Bold / italic (selection or word under the cursor)
Ctrl+M / Ctrl+Shift+M	Inline code / fenced code block
Tab / Shift+Tab	Indent / outdent — nests list items
Ctrl+V	Paste an image → its path lands in the prompt (text pastes as usual)
Ctrl+R	Toggle reference panel
Ctrl+K	Trigger phrases
/	Insert menu — trigger phrases and markdown scaffolding
Ctrl+T	Tab switcher (with preview)
Ctrl+Shift+W	Workspace switcher
Ctrl+G	Put the tab into a group (picker with a create row)
Ctrl+Shift+D	Global tab search
Ctrl+P	Pin / unpin current tab
Ctrl+N / Ctrl+W	New / close tab
Ctrl+Shift+T	Reopen closed tab
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Next / previous tab
Ctrl+Shift+, / .	Move the tab left / right along the bar
Ctrl+Shift+PgUp / PgDn	Same, for keyboards with a nav cluster
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z	Undo / redo
Ctrl+F / Ctrl+H	Find / Find & Replace
Ctrl+Shift+P	Command palette
Ctrl+S / Ctrl+O	Flush the pending write now (it is automatic) / open file
Ctrl+.	Toggle presets sidebar
Alt+M	Markdown preview
Ctrl+E	Focus the editor
Ctrl+Shift+F	Distraction-free mode
Ctrl+Shift+A	Scroll to the active tab
Ctrl+,	Settings
Ctrl+/	Shortcuts reference (and rebinding)
Escape	Close panels

Security boundary

The editor makes no network calls and spawns no arbitrary processes. The webview gets a deliberately narrow shell surface: tmux, plus orca-ide and herdr scoped to individual read/send subcommands. Scoping matters most for herdr — the same binary can also run arbitrary processes and tear down sessions, so it is allowlisted per subcommand rather than wholesale.

Writing files is deliberately narrower than it looks. Saving a pasted image does not go through the filesystem plugin: its fs:allow-write-file permission enables three commands at once — write_file, open and write — which, paired with the home-directory scope, is a generic open-and-write over your whole home. Instead there is one app command that takes bytes and nothing else: the directory comes from the app's own data path, the filename is generated, and the format is detected from the file signature, so the webview never names a destination. That command is listed in the ACL like a plugin one, so it stays visible in the manifest.

Home-directory file access is only safe because of that boundary. The full manifest is src-tauri/capabilities/default.json.

Build from source

Requirements

• Bun ≥ 1.0
• Rust (stable)
• Tauri system dependencies (Linux):
  • Arch: webkit2gtk-4.1, gtk3, libsoup3
  • Ubuntu/Debian: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, libgtk-3-dev, libsoup-3.0-dev

Linux-only by design. No Windows/macOS builds, no auto-update.

Setup

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/exviolet/sendoff.git
cd sendoff
bun install

Develop

bun dev      # Vite dev server + Tauri window

Build & install

bun run build:bin   # build just the binary (tauri build --no-bundle)
./install.sh        # install to ~/.local/ (binary + .desktop + icon)
./uninstall.sh      # remove

build:bin skips AppImage/deb/rpm bundling — you don't need them for a ~/.local/bin install. The full bun run build produces all three. After install.sh the app shows up in rofi / your app launcher.

Update an installed copy

./update.sh   # git pull + sync web submodule + build:bin + install

Pulls master, checks out the pinned web/ submodule commit, rebuilds the binary, and reinstalls in one step. Restart the app from your launcher after.

Close the app before updating. install.sh refuses to run while an instance is alive, because the data directory can move between versions.

Release artifacts

Release AppImages are built inside a container so they stay usable on older distributions (see Download for why):

docker build -t sendoff-appimage-builder .
docker run --rm -v "$PWD":/src -u "$(id -u):$(id -g)" -e HOME=/tmp \
  -e CARGO_TARGET_DIR=/src/src-tauri/target-docker \
  sendoff-appimage-builder bash -lc 'bun install && bun run build'

The artifact lands in src-tauri/target-docker/release/bundle/appimage/. Only the AppImage is published: the .deb and .rpm come out of the same build but have never been installed on a Debian or Fedora system, and shipping untested packages is a promise this project cannot back.

Repo layout

This repo is the product: the Tauri v2 shell, the release artifacts, and the integrations that make Ctrl+Enter land in a terminal.

The editor itself — React + Zustand + Vite — lives in sendoff-web and is pinned here as the web/ git submodule. Clone with --recurse-submodules (see Setup).

bun update-web                                  # bump web/ to its latest commit
git add web && git commit -m "chore: bump web submodule"

Status

A personal tool, used daily on Linux, on v0.2.x. Public so it can serve as a portfolio piece — it works for me, but no support or stability is guaranteed. Expect fast, unannounced breaking changes.

Honest scope, so nobody wastes an evening: Linux-only, x86_64 only, no auto-update, no data migrations (breaking changes land as clean sweeps), and issues may sit. Tests cover pure logic and the IndexedDB layer only — components and hooks are not covered on purpose. Contributions aren't being solicited — fork freely instead.

Formerly called Rewrite. Renamed in August 2026: the name read as "AI paraphraser" — which is the one thing this editor deliberately is not — and collided with OpenRewrite.

Credits

Bundles JetBrains Mono (v2.304), licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. A system Nerd Font is preferred when present, so agent output keeps its icons.

License

MIT