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Comment by swiftcoder | Hacker News Reader

So what are the good Mac-centric alternatives for folks who don't want OpenAI snooping around their terminal? Warp already went all-in on AI and cloud, now iTerm headed down that same path.

Alacritty? Kitty? Hyper?

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Don’t be like that. Even as it is, iTerm is the furthest thing from Warp. The ai api is upto you to hook up using your own provider key, you don’t have to use to and everything else remains the same. And it’s reasonable to assume they chose the OpenAI rn because it has become the unofficial defacto standard, should a universal one emerge I’m fairly confident iTerm would use that. iTerm’s been around long enough and deserves some good will no?

Outrage culture encourages us to get into a big flap and announce our departure.

You can just not turn it on. This is the most mild AI integration of any recent terminal I’ve seen. Also you can set the url from what other commenters are saying so you can use a local LLM if you want.

This manufactured outrage is absurd. iTerm2 has been the most solid and conservative terminal I’ve ever used and people are pretending they jumped the shark with this feature.

Much like with the whole "web3" crypto craze before it, I think it behooves us to push back pretty loudly on everyone who buys into the grift-of-the-week.

Nobody actually believes OpenAI is giving away billions of dollars in free compute just so we don't have to memorize awk syntax...

Well, it's not free. You have to provide an API key to iTerm.

Calling LLMs a “grift of the week” takes a certain level of obtuseness. LLMs provide value _today_, even if they never got better than what we currently have, or even the open source/weights models we have, they would still be useful. Period.

To compare it to crypto is just silly. Yes they both are over hyped and use GPUs/power but that’s about where the similarities end. Real people (not just techbros speed-running why we have regulations in finance) get value from LLMs today, not some mythical “one day we will all use bitcoin”-bullshit.

> good Mac-centric alternatives for folks who don't want OpenAI snooping around their terminal

iTerm, since they don't do that. Just keep it disabled.

Unless you consider any terminal that lets you make network calls to OpenAI = OpenAI snooping around.

I don't think "it's fine, I unchecked the OpenAI checkbox" is going to make my HIPAA/SOC2 auditor very happy

Get a better auditor then.

Checking the box is not enough. You also need to provide an API key for iTerm do be able to do any kind of uploads to OpenAI.

If your auditor does not believe that with the checkbox unchecked and no API key provided, iTerm will not talk to OpenAI, how do they believe any other software you run does not secretly upload stuff to OpenAI?

What's different between a piece of software claiming to not support OpenAI at all vs. one that claims to support OpenAI if the user provides an API key in light of the possibility that both might be lying (if that's an auditors concern)

With iTerm your auditors at least get to check the source code...

It is opt-in, not opt-out. You do not have to uncheck anything. If you do not put the effort to activate it and provide an api key, it will not do anything.

You don't "uncheck the OpenAI checkbox". You check the box if you want to use it, and you provide an API key. Hooking genAI up to your terminal is sort of one of the obvious use cases for this tech, and they're just providing you with the hooks to use it if you like.

As much as I dislike the current trend of "AI ALL THE THINGS", I don't think supporting it as a completely optional feature is in any way problematic.

> You don't "uncheck the OpenAI checkbox". You check the box if you want to use it

There is no checkbox for that, at least I can't find any and I've been looking quite hard.

There is:

- a text input field for the OpenAI API key (by default empty)

- a text input field named "AI Prompt"

- a "Model" dropdown (which doesn't have a "None" option)

- ...and a Token Limit number input field

...that's it. It also doesn't say anywhere that the key field being empty means that the feature is disabled.

A better UI design would have been a checkbox at the top that's disabled by default, and all the detailed UI fields being greyed out and disabled until that checkbox is enabled.

This is a firewall issue, not a software issue. If your auditor think you shouldn't call OpenAI servers, they should ask the network team to set firewall rules in place.

Oh no, you just "snooped" on GP by reading and answering their question.

I probably hate "AI" more than you, but let's be fair: the author did well in this case - it's disabled and you need to actively enable it (for the 2 folks who actually want it). We should commend people for doing it this way rather than using grey patterns, calling home without consent (or without giving you any other option), forcing local apps to the cloud etc.

The feature requires an OpenAI API so it's not even on by default, you will have to configure it to be able to use it. Not to mention that you just have to not use it and boom, no communication will ever be made with OpenAI even if configured. That is a terrible use of the word "snooping".

I'm really happy with WezTerm https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/

Seconded wezterm is such a great terminal and the lua scripting possibilities including communication with neovim, are really powerful. Also it runs everywhere even BSD. Have switched on all my systems.

Wow. Doesn't appear to use Electron!

Terminal.app that is shipped with MacOS is very good.

Wezterm is pretty good. There's little to choose between the two, but I use wezterm because it's cross-platform and I like to have the same experience on Mac and Linux.

Stay with iterm < 3.5.0?

It has been a while since the last release… I don’t mind staying outdated for some more time.

Also, I’m not sure if the openai thingy is mandatory.

Then be careful that you're not accidentally clicking the Update button on the updater popup. There was no upfront warning about the AI integration there.

That's not true. In the infobox that opens before you click the update button the AI feature is explicitly mentioned in the summary of changes and with more details further down.

So far I'm happy with WezTerm for daily use. Sometimes still use iTerm, though.

Nothing in the changelog indicated that “OpenAI is now snooping around”. There is an optional feature that you need to set up yourself if you want to use it. Why do you feel like you need to deliberately misunderstand the post as soon as you read the term “AI” somewhere?

None of that is remotely clear when updating through the iTerm2 auto-update popup for a minor version update.

The Preferences panel doesn't have a single indicator which says whether the AI integration is activated or not. It's probably just bad UI design and not mischief, but I was instantly put off by what initially looked like a dark pattern.

PS: even the changelog doesn't explicitly state that the feature is disabled by default, only indirectly by stating that one needs an OpenAI key because requests cost money.

It's literally mentioned in the changelog:

> It requires you to supply an OpenAI API key.

> PS: even the changelog doesn't explicitly state that the feature is disabled by default, only indirectly by stating that one needs an OpenAI key because requests cost money.

The changelog reads

> You will need to provide an OpenAI API key since GPT costs money to use.

One can only misinterpret that to mean the feature is auto-enabled accidentally on purpose. The fact that you cared to edit your comment with that excuse but didn't retract even a single falsehood you spread all over this thread is bad enough. But to continue to pretend that it doesn't require a paid API key even after you explicitly acknowledged that it does? Outright malicious.

> AFAIK using OpenAI through the webpage doesn't cost money, why should I assume that using it through the REST API is any different?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40426922

I mean… you can literally just either not turn it on, or make your own build of this open-source project.

iTerm2 is open source. Stop clutching your pearls and make a fork, if you are compelled to.

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