Rex: simple, powerful and well designed

A few weeks ago I got an invitation to the beta of Rex by Superlogical. It quickly became my daily driver. Here is why I think you should give it a chance.

The hunt for the best tools

I have always been the curious user, the one who wants to try every modern tool that might help. Quite often I cared more about the tools than about the problems I needed to solve.

The classic example is the to-do list. Back when I was selling wine and running a hotel, I had a lot of tasks to juggle. I wore many hats at once and wanted technology to help me stay organised. I spent months, maybe a year, hunting for the best app. After testing many of them, I settled on the simplest one I already had: Apple Reminders.

Simplicity won. After a few weeks I noticed I was getting more done. I stopped caring about badge colours, little details and all the fancy settings I might be missing out on. My goal was to add a task and finish it, and for that, what Apple ships as built-in software works perfectly.

TUI or GUI, that is the question

Actually, it isn't. It comes down to personal preference. With agents everywhere, people argue a lot about whether a TUI or a GUI is better for agentic development. To me it is the same problem as the to-do list. We should pick the tools that help us deliver our best work in the least time. For me, that tool turned out to be Rex.

I had used Ghostty for about a year. Once tools like Claude Code and Codex CLI arrived, I kept switching between AI apps and terminals. Rex caught my eye on X a while ago. I am a fan of what Mitchell Hashimoto, the creator of Ghostty, and his team at Superlogical build, so I joined the waitlist.

The craftsmanship

I recently wrote about why bringing value matters more than ever. With Rex, you can feel the experience and care the Superlogical team puts into it. From day one I enjoyed using it, and I stopped jumping from one tool to another.

As a UI and design oriented person, I am impressed by the attention to detail in every element. Everything looks clean and polished, and I keep forgetting it is still a beta.

One feature I really enjoy is theming. Rex looks great from the first launch, and the tools I run inside it pick up the same colours. I am not someone who enjoys fine-tuning every little setting. I would rather use something that just works, and Rex does.

I also really appreciate the performance, which comes from the Superlogical team's philosophy. I still work on an M1 Mac and don't feel any pressure on the system. Everything is smooth and stable.

One place for everything

Thanks to Rex, I stopped using Ghostty and the other apps I kept switching between. I now handle projects like Ordinio, Vaer and other experiments in my lab from one place, and I don't feel I need anything else. Adapting the keybindings to my work took very little time.

All the other tools I use, LazyVim, lazygit and my coding agents, feel at home in it.

What Rex can do

I am still exploring what Rex is capable of and how it can improve my workflows. So far, these options from the Rex docs stand out:

• a built-in agent skill that lets agents like Claude Code and Codex open tabs, split panes and read a terminal's screen, recommended because it saves tokens and time
• the rex CLI for creating sessions, splitting panes and running commands, by hand or from plain shell scripts
• Lua scripts that can react to events, such as a program exiting or a terminal changing directory
• remote access to Rex servers on Linux and FreeBSD, with Tailscale as the recommended way in

Bringing agents in

Recently I started exploring a more autonomous way of agentic development in my projects. I wanted to build my flow on Rex's panes and tabs, and asking agents to set it up was a breeze:

• reviews handed back and forth between Claude Code and Codex
• floating windows for my scripts and quality gates
• all of it working out of the box, as part of my harness

This is the moment you realise you are getting attached to a product.

Pick your tool and stick to it

If you are still hunting for the perfect tool, here is my advice:

• stop for a minute and work out what you truly miss and need
• once you choose something, stick with it
• focus on what matters in the end: the work itself

Good software gets out of your way and lets you do your best work. Rex does exactly that.