Omarchy FTROU

27 Oct

04 - Agents, explained (plus a friendly hello to the terminal)

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Hi friend,

Last issue I promised to unpack the line I ended on: Omarchy is a "beautiful, opinionated, agentic Linux." Confession: when I checked, the official tagline is actually "beautiful, fun & agentic Linux." But I'll stand by "opinionated" too, and I'll explain why.

Along the way, we'll take a gentle first walk through the terminal, because agents and the terminal turn out to be good friends.

Beautiful, fun, opinionated

Beautiful is easy. Pick a theme and the whole system changes at once: terminal, top bar, notifications, wallpaper.

Opinionated is baked right into the name. The "Oma" in Omarchy is for omakase, Japanese for "chef's choice." The Omarchy team picks the tools and tunes the details, so you get a finished desktop instead of a hundred decisions. But it's still your computer, and you can change anything.

And fun? That's the part you get to discover for yourself.

So what's an "agent"?

You've probably used an AI chatbot: you type a question, it types an answer. An agent is an AI helper that can also do things on your computer. It can read your settings files, run commands, install software, and fix things, while explaining what it's doing.

Omarchy is "agentic" because it treats agents as first-class citizens. On first boot it invites you to pick a default agent. There are several to choose from, including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Grok Build, the one I've been using. You can change your choice any time under Setup > Defaults > Agent in the Omarchy menu (Super + Space). If the agent isn't installed yet, picking it installs it for you.

Then launch your default agent with Super + Shift + Ctrl + A. The first time, if you haven't picked one, it shows you the list.

The shortcut that fooled me

Here's a real one. I had picked my agent under Setup > Defaults > Agent, then pressed Super + Shift + A, expecting my agent. A ChatGPT window opened instead.

It turns out Super + Shift + A is a separate shortcut that opens ChatGPT as a web app. (Super + Shift + Alt + A does the same for Grok.) Your default agent lives on Super + Shift + Ctrl + A. The menu setting and that shortcut are simply different things. Grok Build helped me sort it out, which is exactly the kind of job agents are good at.

What agents are good for

There are several jobs they're good at, including these (a couple of which I've tried myself):

  • Fixing and changing settings. A lot of Omarchy's settings live in plain text files. An agent can find the right file, explain it, and make the change, like my shortcut fix.
  • Building things. I built NomNomNanny, my little diet tracker, with Grok Build. The agents icon in the Omarchy top bar even has a "Make something" section with starter prompts for a new theme, plugin, or app.
  • Making sense of a crash. When an app crashes, Omarchy pops up a "Process crashed" notification. Click it, and your agent looks at what went wrong and can help you report the bug.
  • Explaining a command before you run it. Lots of install steps on GitHub are a single line of terminal text. Paste it to your agent and ask, "What does this do, and is it safe?"

You can even run AI models on your own computer, with no cloud involved. Omarchy's manual recommends LM Studio (point and click, great for beginners) or Ollama (a terminal tool). Both are under Install > AI in the Omarchy menu. I set up a local chat that runs on Ollama. It took some fiddling to get Ollama running in the background so the chat could find it, but I got there.

One honest caution: agents launched from Omarchy's shortcuts usually run without stopping to ask permission, so they really will do things. For anything big, ask it to explain its plan first, then say go.

A gentle hello to the terminal

If the terminal makes you nervous, you're in good company. It's just a window where you type instructions instead of clicking them. You don't need to memorize anything. Most of the time you'll be pasting a command someone else wrote and reading what comes back.

Try it now:

  1. Open it with Super + Return (Return is the Enter key).
  2. Paste a command. Copy this one, then press Super + V in the terminal to paste it:

omarchy theme list

  1. Press Enter, and read what it says back. You'll see a list of the themes you can pick from. That's it. You just used the terminal, and nothing changed.

A few tips:

  • Copy and paste work everywhere with Super + C and Super + V, including the terminal. Windows folks: in a terminal, Ctrl + C doesn't copy. It stops whatever is running. That's useful, but surprising the first time.
  • Want to see what Omarchy can do from here? Type omarchy and press Enter. It prints a list of commands with short descriptions.
  • Bring your agent along. Type a and press Enter to start your default agent right in the terminal. If you use Grok Build, typing grok works too. Or hand it a task in one go:

omarchy agent prompt "Explain how my keyboard shortcuts are set up"

  • Read the error, don't fear it. If something goes wrong, the terminal usually says what. Copy the message and paste it to your agent, or ask the Omarchy community on X. They're a friendly, helpful bunch.
  • Forgot a shortcut? Super + K shows them all. It's the only one the manual says you have to memorize.

Security heads-up

A fake copy of the Omarchy plugin marketplace, omarchystore.com, is back online. Don't install themes or plugins from it. The real marketplace is plugins.omarchy.org. Here's the warning I spotted on X. I had my own agent read it and confirm which marketplace is the real one before I passed it along, which is one more thing agents are good for.

Worth a follow

A few X accounts that help if you're learning Omarchy:

Have you tried an agent yet, or is the terminal still the scary part? Hit reply and tell me. I read every message.

Warmly,
Katherine

Coming next issue: I'm still deciding! Omarchy plugins are high on my list, but tell me what you'd like to see.