HoTTY is an open-source terminal emulator for Windows. Connect over SSH, Telnet, Serial, WSL, or a local shell; arrange sessions in a multi-pane workspace; and call on the AI provider of your choice — only when you want it.
The protocols a Windows engineer reaches for day to day — each with the connection options the app actually exposes.
Host key verification with fingerprint display, private-key authentication, and configurable KEX, cipher, MAC, and host-key algorithms.
Plain Telnet with selectable text encoding per session — UTF-8, Shift_JIS, or EUC-JP.
USB / COM console access with configurable baud rate, data bits, parity, stop bits, and flow control.
Open any installed Windows Subsystem for Linux distribution directly, with distribution selection.
cmd, PowerShell / pwsh, and Git Bash run as ordinary sessions in the same workspace.
Reach Compute Engine instances through a Google Cloud IAP tunnel — no public IP needed, authenticated by gcloud. Pick project, zone, and instance.
Split the window into a grid, keep your tabs in a dock on any edge, and move sessions around by keyboard or drag.
1×1, 1×2, 2×1, 2×2, 2×3, and 3×2. The active pane is outlined and lit with an accent glow.
The icon column and the tab list move together to the left, right, top, or bottom edge. Tabs on screen carry their pane's number; hidden tabs show their target and newest output.
Move pane focus by keyboard; drag a tab onto a pane to show it there, or onto Hidden to put it away without closing it.
Bring your own API keys and pick a provider and model per session. AI is optional, and it never executes anything you haven't allowed.
A dedicated chat pane with streaming responses, switchable personas, image attachments, and per-message token and cost tracking — in a pane, or in a window of its own.
Right-click selected terminal output and type a free-form question about it — explain an error, summarize a log.
The AI proposes and can run commands — gated by a managed Whitelist / Blacklist and a safety classifier, so risky commands aren't auto-executed.
Let one conversation follow live output from several terminals at once — with commands routed to the right one — and surface anomalies as they happen.
Five built-in utilities that live in the same layout as your sessions.
Browse the log files HoTTY writes — session logs as text, AI chat transcripts as formatted conversations, and Ping Monitor CSVs as searchable tables.
Built-in TFTP and SFTP servers for pushing firmware and configs to network devices — the pane shows the address devices should use.
An embedded browser pane for the web admin UI of a device you are working on.
Watch multiple targets at once — each with its last 60 replies, loss, and average.
Live SNMP interface counters — bps, pps, errors and discards — for switches and routers.
Tabs move into a dock on any edge, the AI can open the terminal it needs, and your host tree can mirror NetBox.
The icon column and a vertical tab list move together to any window edge, or narrow to icons. Tabs on screen carry their pane's number; hidden tabs show their target and newest output. + New Session opens just what you pick — SSH / Telnet, Serial, a local shell, GCP, Web, or a tool pane.
When an investigation needs a terminal it doesn't have, the AI can ask to open one — a PC shell for ping or tracert, or an SSH / Telnet session to a neighbor it found with CDP / LLDP. You approve each request on a card, and saved Host Tree logins are used without the AI ever seeing them.
Point HoTTY at your NetBox and its Regions and Sites appear as folders in the host tree, kept in step and read-only. A host can be moved into the folder whose IP range covers its address.
The storage and verification details, stated plainly.
Stored credentials are encrypted with Windows DPAPI.
SSH host keys are verified, with the fingerprint shown for confirmation.
Multi-line clipboard content prompts a confirmation before it reaches the terminal.
Export and import your host tree as an encrypted .htree file.
Write a session to a log file, with per-session text encoding.
Configure KEX, cipher, MAC, and host-key algorithms; GCE IAP tunnels are supported.
Free and open source under GPL-3.0. Download a build from GitHub Releases, or build it yourself from source.