This is a submission for the GitHub Finish-Up-A-Thon Challenge
What I Built
I built Termote, a lightweight Rust + Tauri based Agentic Development Environment for people who run terminals, servers, scripts, and AI coding agents on their desktop.
At its core, Termote gives you a persistent multi-pane workspace where you can run multiple terminals side by side, launch AI CLI tools like Claude Code or Codex, manage panes, receive notifications, and connect from your phone using QR-based mobile access (from any network). The goal is simple: your desktop becomes the main development machine, and your phone becomes a remote control for checking builds, restarting servers, or responding to long-running AI agents.
The project started as an experimental remote terminal/web dashboard, but during this sprint I turned it into a real desktop-first app. The installer now bundles the Tauri frontend, Rust backend sidecar, fonts, assets, Dev Tunnels CLI, and platform-specific release builds for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
For me, Termote means more than just another dev tool. It was an old project I had left behind, and from May 21 to June 7 I came back to it, cleaned it up, rebuilt the direction, and shipped v0.1.0 & v0.2.0.
Demo
The Comeback Story
Before May 21, Termote was powerful but messy. It had a Rust backend, a large Next.js frontend, terminal panes, mobile access, file transfer, browser panes, source control experiments, notes, whiteboards, and even extra blog/landing-page content. But the project had become too spread out. It depended too much on a hosted web frontend, public tunnel URLs, a fragile installer flow, and a half-finished Tauri shell. Then it went quiet for 36 days.
On May 21, I picked it back up with one goal: revive it and actually ship it.
The first step was turning the project from an abandoned experiment into a real desktop-first product. I removed the half-broken lazygit integration, cut the public-web-first direction, removed blog/landing-page bloat, and bundled the Rust backend directly inside the Tauri desktop app. That became the foundation for the first revived release, v0.1.
After shipping v0.1, I kept going. Across the next sprint, I pushed Termote toward v0.2.0 with native Tauri browser webviews, better cross-client sync, notification history, blue pane title bars when a pane needs attention, mobile keyboard controls, single-instance desktop behavior, folder breadcrumbs/search, group management polish, better pane syncing,a open with termote shortcut, and a full release workflow.
So the comeback was not just one release. It was a full revival arc:
abandoned project → desktop-first v0.1 → polished v0.2.0 release.
By June 7, Termote had a much clearer identity: an Agentic Development Environment for running terminals, scripts, servers, and AI coding agents on your desktop, while still being able to control everything from your phone.
My Experience with GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot helped a lot during this comeback because I was not starting from a clean new project. I was returning to an old codebase with Rust backend code, Tauri desktop APIs, Next.js UI, WebSocket state syncing, mobile behavior, and release configuration all mixed together.
I used Copilot like a pair programmer while reviving the project from v0.1 to v0.2.0. It helped me move faster through old code, generate boilerplate, wire up state, draft handlers, fix UI edge cases, and understand parts of the app I had not touched in weeks.
It was especially useful for the repetitive but important work: notification state, pane synchronization, Ctrl+V/bracketed paste handling, Tauri command wiring, browser webview lifecycle cleanup, mobile UI fixes, and release-note drafting.
But Copilot did not decide the product direction. I still had to choose what to cut, what to keep, what to stabilize, and what was worth shipping. Copilot helped me move faster, but the real work was turning Termote from a scattered experiment into a shipped desktop product.
The biggest win was momentum. Once I picked the project back up on May 21, Copilot helped me keep pushing through the boring bugs and cleanup work until I had shipped both v0.1 and v0.2.0.
Check it Out on Github: AliSharjeell/Termote
