The side panel of a chat can hold your own terminal: a shell where you type commands yourself, starting in the chat's workspace folder. It belongs to you alone: Oda does not type in it, does not read its output, and nothing from it joins the chat. The terminal is available in the DataMind Oda desktop app; in the VS Code extension the tab stays off, since VS Code has its own terminal.
No. Oda keeps its own shells for the commands it runs itself, and it never uses this one. Those shells are described in Persistent shells; the reference pages for them are Terminal sessions and Terminal tools.
No. Commands you type run with the rights of your own account, and they are not checked by the chat's access mode or by Oda's approval prompts. Nothing widens your rights for them, and changing the access mode does not change the terminal. The modes are explained in Workspaces, files and permissions.
The terminal comes from the Terminal tab switch in Settings > Developer > Advanced features, and the switch applies immediately. If no Terminal tab appears, that switch is off; turn it on there, or ask your administrator if your company keeps it off. In the VS Code extension the terminal stays off, since VS Code has its own terminal. See Advanced features.
Yes. Collapsing the side panel or switching tabs or chats leaves the shell running, and a busy command is not stopped by a timer. The shell ends when you close its tab or quit Oda.
The tab disappears at once, and the app ends the shell and everything running in it, in the background. A closed terminal cannot be reopened, so open a new one when you need it. If the app cannot finish ending the processes, it remembers the request and retries it; you do not need to do anything.
Reloading reattaches each terminal tab to its shell and restores the screen. If the shell is gone, for example after Oda quit, the tab shows This terminal no longer exists. Open a new terminal. and offers a New terminal button; nothing restarts the old shell on its own.
Up to eight per chat at a time, and exited terminals count toward the limit too. Close unused tabs to release them. At the limit, a new terminal is refused with a Terminal error note: The terminal limit has been reached. Close unused terminals and try again. Exited terminals also count toward the limit.
Yes. Open the arrow beside New terminal in the panel and pick from the list; that shell opens right away and is remembered for later terminals. Tab completion and start-up files work as they do in that shell outside Oda. If a remembered shell is no longer installed on this computer, the default shell starts instead.
Only one view of a terminal owns the keyboard at a time; the other shows a note reading This view is read-only., with a Take control button. Click Take control in the view you are working in.
A connection hiccup stopped the screen updates. The shell keeps running and the screen stays as it was; press Reconnect to carry on. Commands are not replayed or stopped by the reconnection.
Typing is buffered up to 64 KiB at a time, and a very large paste can overflow the buffer. The tab shows a Terminal error note: The input buffer is full. Reconnect and try again. Press Reconnect, then carry on.