Shell Now 🐚⚡

Instant Web Terminal via ttyd + cloudflared — A one-click webshell for developers, educators, and hackers.

ShellNow is a tiny Go-powered CLI tool that helps you instantly start a temporary, publicly-accessible web terminal using ttyd and Cloudflare Quick Tunnels.

Ideal for quick debugging, remote terminal sharing, and Linux teaching demos.

🎥 Demo

It's a 3 min video, and it will take you 1.5 min with 2x speed, or 1.8 seconds at 100x speed.

✨ Features

• 🚀 One command to launch a public web shell
• 🧩 Automatically downloads ttyd and cloudflared (cross-platform)
• 🔐 Optional password authentication
• 💻 Runs any shell or custom command (e.g. htop, matrix, bash)

📦 Installation

Homebrew (macOS)

# Add this tap to your Homebrew
brew tap strrl/collective

# Install shell-now
brew install shell-now

# Start shell-now
shell-now

Docker

docker run cr.strrl.dev/strrl/shell-now:latest

Note: The Docker version runs in an isolated container environment separate from your host system. Use this for demos or when you want a sandboxed shell experience.

Native App Alternative

Are you an Apple fanboy and prefer a native app? See: https://github.com/amantus-ai/vibetunnel

Quick Install

# Auto-detect OS and architecture
OS=$(uname -s); ARCH=$(uname -m)
case $OS in Linux) OS="Linux";; Darwin) OS="Darwin";; esac
case $ARCH in x86_64|amd64) ARCH="x86_64";; arm64|aarch64) ARCH="arm64";; esac
curl -LO https://github.com/STRRL/shell-now/releases/latest/download/shell-now_${OS}_${ARCH}.tar.gz
tar -xzf shell-now_${OS}_${ARCH}.tar.gz
sudo install shell-now /usr/local/bin/shell-now && rm shell-now shell-now_${OS}_${ARCH}.tar.gz

📚 Why?

Sometimes you just want to…

• 🔧 Show a live bug in a terminal to a teammate
• 👨‍🏫 Give a quick Linux/DevOps lesson via browser
• 🧪 Share a terminal-based demo of your CLI tool
• 🏠 Remotely connect to your own Pi/NAS with no public IP setup

ShellNow makes it dead-simple.

⚠️ Warning

This tool exposes your local shell to the public internet.

• ALWAYS Use password protection
• Prefer read-only demos when possible
• Avoid running this on sensitive systems

🐛 Known Issues

• Safari Compatibility: The web terminal currently has compatibility issues with Safari browser. Use Chrome, Firefox, or Edge for the best experience.

🙌 Contributing

Pull requests, issues, and ideas are welcome!