How to use the terminal in Replit

In your Replit workspace, look at the left sidebar for the Tools dock. Click the Shell icon to open an interactive Linux terminal in a new pane. If you do not see it, click the search icon at the top of the sidebar and type Shell. The Shell pane appears inside your workspace and behaves like a standard Linux terminal. You can resize it by dragging the pane border, or float it into its own window using the three-dot menu in the tab header.

Use standard Linux commands to explore your project. The ls command lists files and directories. Use cd to change directories and pwd to print your current location. These commands work exactly like any Linux system. Replit runs a full Linux environment under the hood via Nix, so most commands you know from local development work here too. Hidden files like .replit and replit.nix live in the project root and can be viewed with ls -a.

1ls -la
2pwd
3cd src
4ls
5cd ..

The Shell is where you run package managers. For Node.js projects use npm install or pnpm install. For Python projects use pip install. Replit pre-installs common tools like npm, pip, pnpm, poetry, curl, wget, and git in the Shell environment. If a tool is missing, you can add it through the replit.nix file or the Dependencies GUI. After installing packages, they persist in your project storage until you reset the environment.

1# Node.js example
2npm install axios
3
4# Python example
5pip install requests
6
7# Check installed packages
8npm list --depth=0
9pip list

You can execute any script directly from Shell. Run Node.js files with node filename.js, Python files with python filename.py, or use npm run commands defined in your package.json. The Shell supports background processes using the ampersand operator, piping output with the pipe character, and redirecting output to files. This is useful for running build steps, database migrations, or test suites outside of the main Run button workflow.

1# Run a script directly
2node index.js
3
4# Run a package.json script
5npm run build
6
7# Run a Python script
8python3 main.py
9
10# Run a command in the background
11node server.js &

Replit supports running several Shell tabs at once. Click the plus icon next to your existing Shell tab or open another Shell from the Tools dock. This lets you run a development server in one Shell while running tests or watching logs in another. Each Shell instance shares the same filesystem and environment variables but operates independently. You can split panes horizontally or vertically using the three-dot menu for a side-by-side layout.

The Console is different from Shell. It only shows output when you click the Run button at the top of the workspace. Console entries are structured with metadata including the command that ran, stdout and stderr content, duration, and exit status. You cannot type interactive commands into the Console. Only one Console instance exists per workspace. Client-side JavaScript logs from your browser preview appear in the Preview DevTools, not in Console. Use Console to monitor your running app and Shell for everything else.

Replit includes an AI command helper inside Shell. Right-click inside the Shell pane and select Generate command from the context menu. Describe what you want to do in plain English and the AI suggests a terminal command you can review before executing. This is helpful when you know what you want to accomplish but are unsure of the exact syntax. For more complex workflow automation, teams working on production Replit projects can consult RapidDev for guidance on optimizing terminal-based build and deployment pipelines.