Indie Terminal is a Founder OS for indie hackers — not another chat window or research tab. You work from one command center where market intelligence, tools, workflows, and exports share the same context about your startup.

What problem does it solve?

Founders lose hours switching between ChatGPT threads, Notion docs, pricing spreadsheets, and Twitter drafts. Indie Terminal replaces that with a single terminal: type a command, get a cited deliverable, chain the next step, approve when it's ready to ship.

Who this is for

• —Solo founders validating an idea before writing code
• —Bootstrapped SaaS teams who need comp-backed pricing and positioning
• —Build-in-public creators who want cited data points, not hot takes
• —Operators wiring agents and automations against real market data

Your first session

Three actions — under five minutes:

Need the full map? Read Founder OS next, or jump to Quick Start for a guided walkthrough.

Founder OS is the operating layer on top of the indie index. One terminal window — commands, tools, context, and approvals — instead of ten browser tabs and exported ChatGPT threads.

North star workflow

Nothing ships to Slack, Notion, or X until you approve it in the queue. Humans stay in charge — agents do the prep work.

What makes it different

A practical walkthrough of the resources most founders use on day one. Everything runs from /command unless noted.

Your first 5 minutes

Ready? Open /command and type /research.

Type commands in the Terminal command bar at /command. Founder OS commands run inline with your startup context. Legacy tool commands open the tool panel in the same window.

Founder OS commands

Live today: /research. Planned: /post, /asset, /build, /doc.

Inline tool commands

These open index-backed tools inside Terminal — no navigation away from /command.

People don't buy tools. They buy outcomes. Each playbook maps a real founder situation to commands and tools that exist in Indie Terminal today.

A workflow is a chain of commands where each step reads context from the last. Artifacts accumulate in your session — visible in the context rail on the right of the command runner.

Session context rail

Every Founder OS run appends an artifact to your session. The rail shows lineage — click any prior artifact to re-read it, or chain a new command that inherits that context.

When to chain vs. run standalone

• —Chain when outputs feed the next step — research before a post, audit before a pricing change
• —Run standalone for one-off questions — /radar, /value, /intel don't need prior context
• —Clear session when switching to a different startup or unrelated project
• —Save important artifacts to Workspace for long-term company brain storage

Connect the tools you already use at /api-keys. Indie Terminal never auto-posts — every connector action queues for your approval on /command first.

Supported connectors

The indie index is Indie Terminal's proprietary dataset of bootstrapped and indie startups — MRR estimates, growth velocity, pricing tiers, categories, and acquisition signals. It is the source of truth behind every citation in /research and every comp in /price.

How citations work

When /research names a competitor, it links to an index row — not a hallucinated company. You can verify MRR, category peers, and pricing before you act on the recommendation.

Access paths

The Indie Terminal REST API (v1) exposes the indie startup index for programmatic access. Built for agents, research automations, and developer integrations — every response includes a _meta provenance block so you know data freshness and methodology.

Authentication

Discovery

GET /api/v1 is public — returns endpoint list, rate limits, and schema. No auth required.

Rate Limits

Provenance Block

Every response carries a _meta field — live universe_size, as-of timestamp, and methodology. MRR values are estimates unless a row is marked verified.

{
  "_meta": {
    "api_version": "v1",
    "as_of": "2026-06-14T08:00:00.000Z",
    "universe_size": 10247,
    "methodology": "Startup records from the Indie Terminal index…",
    "docs": "https://indieterminal.com/docs#api-reference"
  }
}

Endpoints

GET /api/v1

GET /api/v1/startups/search?q=email+marketing&mrr_min=500&limit=10
Authorization: Bearer it_live_…

GET /api/v1/startups/notion-clone
Authorization: Bearer it_live_…

GET /api/v1/categories?q=ai&sort=growth&limit=20
Authorization: Bearer it_live_…

GET /api/v1/signals?limit=10&since=2026-04-01T00:00:00Z
Authorization: Bearer it_live_…

POST /api/v1/compare
Authorization: Bearer it_live_…

{ "slugs": ["notion-clone", "obsidian-alternative", "roam-competitor"] }

Quick answers about Founder OS, the indie index, and how Indie Terminal works today.