Let me pre-apologize for this long and rambling post but I get excited by stuff like this. 

I think a lot of folks here (myself included) have been largely oblivious to what Tim & company over at Open WebUI has been up to lately with their repo.  I know I’ve been too busy trying to get all the various Qwen3.5 models to count the “R”’s in Strawberry to care about much else  right now. 

Anyways, It didn’t help that there was a good solid month without even a peep out of the Open WebUI team in terms of new releases... but now I can see why they were so quiet. It’s because they were cooking up some “dope sh!t” as the kids say (they still say that, right?)

Last week, they released probably the most impressive feature update I’ve seen from them in like the last year. They started a new Open WebUI project integration called Open Terminal.

https://github.com/open-webui/open-terminal

Open Terminal is basically a Dockerized (sandboxed) terminal with a live file browser / render canvas that sits on the right side of your Open WebUI interface when active. You can drag files into and out of the file browser from the host PC to the sandbox, and the AI can basically do whatever you want it to with the sandbox environment (install libraries, edit files, whatever). The file render canvas will show you a preview of any supported file type it can open, so you can watch it live edit your files as the model makes tool calls. 

Terminal is blowing my friggin mind over here. With it enabled, my models are like super-capable of doing actual work now and can finally do a bunch of stuff without even using MCPs. I was like “ok, now you have a sandboxed headless computer at your disposal, go nuts” and it was like “cool, Ima go do some stuff and load a bunch of Python libraries and whatnot” and BAM if just started figuring things out through trial and error. It never got stuck in a loop and never got frustrated (was using Qwen3.5 35b 3a btw). It dropped the files in the browser on the right side of the screen and I can easily download them, or if it can render them, it did so right in the file browser. 

If your application file type isn’t supported yet for rendering a preview in the file browser, you could just Docker bind mount to a host OS directory and Open the shared file in its native app and watch your computer do stuff like there is a friggin ghost controlling your computer. Wild!

Here’s the Docker command with the local bind mount for those who want to go that route:

docker run -d --name open-terminal --restart unless-stopped -p 8000:8000 -e OPEN\_TERMINAL\_API\_KEY=your-secret-key -v \~/open-terminal-files:/home/user ghcr.io/open-webui/open-terminal

You also have a bash shell at your disposal as well under the file browser window. The only fault I found so far is that the terminal doesn’t echo the commands from tool calls in the chat, but I can overlook that minor complaint for now because the rest of this thing is so badass. 

This new terminal feature makes the old Open WebUI functions / tools / pipes, etc, pretty much obsolete in my opinion. They’re like baby toys now. This is a pretty great first step towards giving Open WebUI users Claude Code-like functionality within Open WebUI. 

You can run this single user, or if you have an enterprise license, they are working on a multi-user setup called “Terminals”. Not sure the multi-user setup is out yet, but that’s cool that they are working on it.

A couple things to note for those who want to try this:

MAKE SURE your model supports “Native” tool calling and that you have it set to “Native” in the model settings on whatever model you connect to the terminal, or you’ll have a bad time with it. Stick with models that are known to be Native tool calling compatible. 

They also have a “bare metal” install option for the brave and stupid among us who just want to YOLO it and give a model free rein over our computers. 

The instructions for setup and integration are here:

https://docs.openwebui.com/features/extensibility/open-terminal/

I’m testing it with Qwen3.5 35b A3b right now and it is pretty flipping amazing for such a small model. 

One other cool feature, the default docker command sets up a persistent volume so your terminal environment remains as you left it between chats. If it gets messed up just kill the volume and start over with a fresh one! 

Watching this thing work through problems by trial and error and make successive tool calls and try again after something doesn’t go its way is just mind boggling to me. I know it’s old hat to the Claude Cioders, but to me it seems like magic. 

Open WebUI’s New Open Terminal + “Native” Tool Calling + Qwen3.5 35b = Holy Smokes!