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New to the terminal

The terminal isn't scary.
Let's prove it.

If you've never used one, it looks like a black window full of secret code. It isn't. It's just a window where you type what you want instead of clicking it — and by the end of this page you'll know the six commands that cover almost everything you need.

What is it? Open it pwd ls cd mkdir Run a program Copy & paste Why bother?
00

What even is a terminal?

Two words you'll see everywhere — here's what they actually mean, in plain English.

A terminal

Is just a window on your computer, like Finder or a web browser. The difference is what you do in it: instead of clicking icons, you type a short instruction and press Enter. That's it. It's not a hacker thing — it's a typing thing.

Bash

Is the language the terminal understands — the specific set of words it knows how to run, like cd, ls, and mkdir. When someone says "run this in bash" or "open a bash prompt," they just mean "type this into your terminal."

One more word you'll see: the prompt — that's the little bit of text (often ending in $ or %) that appears when the terminal is ready for you. It's the terminal saying "I'm listening — go ahead."

01

Step 1 — open it up

It's already on your computer. No download needed.

  1. Press ⌘ Command + Space — a search box called Spotlight pops up.
  2. Type Terminal.
  3. Press Enter. A window opens — usually black or white text on a plain background.

Leave it open

Keep that window open for the rest of this page — every example below, you can type straight into it.

02

Where am I? — pwd

Every Finder window is showing you a location. The terminal has one too — you just can't see it until you ask.

terminal 
you@laptop gravity % pwd
/Users/you/projects/opensource/gravity

pwd stands for print working directory. In plain English: "tell me where I am."

gravity
Macintosh HD ▸ Users ▸ you ▸ projects ▸ opensource ▸ gravity
📁app
📁views
📁scripts
📄README.md

Same idea, same folder — this is what "you are here" looks like on a Mac (Finder) or Windows (File Explorer). The address bar up top is the window's version of pwd.

03

What's here? — ls and ls -la

The two commands you'll type more than any other. This is your terminal's version of just looking at a folder.

terminal 
you@laptop gravity % ls
app       docs      README.md  scripts
data      Makefile  requirements.txt  views

ls = list. Same information Finder shows you — just as text.

gravity
📁app
📁data
📁docs
📁scripts
📁views
📄README.md
terminal 
you@laptop gravity % ls -la
.env       .git       app       docs
Makefile   README.md scripts   views

Same folder — but now .env and .git showed up. Anything starting with a dot is hidden by default. -l and -a are "flags" — little switches you add after a command to change what it does. -a means "show all, even hidden ones." (The -l part adds extra detail per file — permissions and timestamps — that's a topic for another day; don't worry about it yet.)

gravity
📄.env
📁.git
📁app
📁docs
📁scripts
📁views

Finder hides these too, by default — ⌘ Command + Shift + . toggles them on (Windows: View → Show → Hidden items). ls -la is the terminal's version of that same toggle.

04

Move around — cd

Short for "change directory." It's the terminal's version of double-clicking a folder.

Going in

In Finder, you double-click a folder to open it. In the terminal, you type cd and the folder's name:

terminal 
you@laptop gravity % cd views
you@laptop views %

Notice the prompt itself changed from gravity to views — that's the terminal confirming you moved.

Going back

In Finder, you click the back arrow. In the terminal, two dots mean "the folder one level up":

terminal 
you@laptop views % cd ..
you@laptop gravity %

Back to where you started. cd .. is one of the most-typed commands there is — get comfortable with it.

05

Make something — mkdir

Short for "make directory." Same as right-clicking → New Folder.

terminal 
you@laptop gravity % mkdir my-test-folder
you@laptop gravity % ls
app  data  docs  Makefile  my-test-folder  views

Nothing appears to "happen" — no popup, no confirmation. That's normal. The terminal only speaks up when something goes wrong; silence means it worked. Run ls again right after, like above, to see it for yourself.

gravity
📁app
📁data
📁docs
📁my-test-folder
📁views

Same new folder, if you glanced over at Finder right now. Two different windows onto the exact same reality — that's the whole trick to understanding the terminal.

06

Run a program

Double-clicking an icon launches a program. Typing its name and pressing Enter does the exact same thing.

Any program

Python comes installed on most Macs. Try asking it its own version number:

terminal 
you@laptop gravity % python3 --version
Python 3.12.4

python3 is the program's name. --version is a flag telling it what to do — "just tell me your version and stop." Every command you've used on this page is really the same idea: program name, then instructions.

Now run one of Gravity's

This repo ships its own commands through make. From inside the gravity folder:

terminal 
make help

Prints every command this project understands — make dev, make deploy, and the rest. You just went from "never touched a terminal" to "running Gravity's own toolkit." That's the whole point.

07

Copy, paste, go

You don't have to type any of this by hand — that's what the Copy buttons are for.

terminal 
echo "it worked"
  1. Click the Copy button in the top-right of any command box on this site — try the one on the left.
  2. Click into your terminal window to make sure it's the active window.
  3. Paste: ⌘ Command + V on a Mac, Ctrl + V on Windows.
  4. Press Enter to actually run it — pasting only types it in, it doesn't run itself.
Why bother learning this?

You just walked out of the box.

Tools like Claude Desktop or the ChatGPT desktop app are genuinely powerful — but they only let you do what they decided to build a button for. That's a real limit, even when it doesn't feel like one.

Someone else's box

A desktop AI app is like being handed a toolbox with the three tools its maker decided you'd need. Useful, until the thing you're trying to build needs a fourth tool that isn't in there.

The whole hardware store

The terminal plus an AI coding agent that lives in it — Claude Code, Codex CLI — can install anything, run anything, read every file, and carry out a real multi-step task start to finish. Nothing is off the shelf because it's your shelf.

You don't have to become a programmer to use it — you just did most of the hard part already, up above. The rest is asking an AI agent for what you want, in your own words, from right here in the same window.

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