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Using the terminal

Direct shell access to your notebook's VM for data downloads, CLI tools, and package management

The Terminal in Livedocs gives you direct shell access to the virtual machine (VM) running your notebook. This means you can run commands just as you would in a regular local or remote terminal.

How to Open the Terminal

  1. Look for the status bar at the bottom of the editor.
  2. Click on Terminal.
  3. A terminal window will appear inside the editor, connected to the same environment as your notebook.

You now have full shell access — anything you run here executes directly on the VM.

What You Can Do

The possibilities are wide open. You can:

  • Manage files and directories
  • Install additional packages
  • Run scripts
  • Use CLI-based tools for data work

Terminal use cases

Here are a few practical ways you might use the terminal:

Download Data

wget https://example.com/data.csv -O mydata.csv
curl -L https://example.com/dataset.zip -o dataset.zip && unzip dataset.zip

Inspect Files

ls -lh
head mydata.csv
wc -l mydata.csv

Use CLI tools

csvkit mydata.csv | csvsql --query "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM stdin"
jq '.items[] | {name, value}' data.json

Install packages

pip install polars duckdb
apt-get update && apt-get install -y sqlite3

Pro tip: Any data or changes you make in the terminal are immediately available to your notebook cells, and vice versa — they share the same environment.