Why does the client only come from Terminalwire, and why does it auto-update?

Two of Terminalwire’s rules surprise people, so here’s the reasoning plainly, because they’re on purpose.

Only Terminalwire distributes the client. Even companies that pay for a subscription don’t ship the client themselves — they point their users at our installer. Why: the client is the one piece that runs on your users’ machines, and a CLI you download and execute is a lot of trust. Keeping distribution in one place means there’s exactly one authentic, signed source for it — no mirrors, no repackaged copies, no “is this the real one?” There’s nothing for an attacker to impersonate, and nothing for an operator to accidentally get wrong.

The client updates itself, through us. Because there’s one client talking to every Terminalwire server, keeping it current keeps the whole ecosystem compatible and lets us push security fixes to everyone at once — the way your web browser updates itself rather than making each website ship its own. You get fixes without doing anything; operators don’t have to chase their users to upgrade.

Think of it like the browser model: servers are open and yours to run, but the thing everyone installs is one trusted, auto-updating client that we keep honest.

And it stays out of your way. Automation, CI, and AI agents are first-class here — installing and running the client is fully scripted-friendly. The license check never prompts, never blocks, and never changes the exit code; an unlicensed server just prints an advisory notice to standard error. So none of this interferes with pipelines or AI-driven use. The specifics live in our Terms and Client EULA.