Frequently asked questions

venus is a fast, native terminal and SSH/SFTP client with a developer workspace built in. Beyond tabs, splits, a dual-pane file manager, and port forwarding, you can open any folder — on your computer or on a host over SSH — as a project and get a code editor, Git & worktrees, a task runner, project-wide search, a database explorer (PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQLite), an API client, Docker, and an environment/.env manager. Core project tools work the same locally and over SSH; runtime isolation and CI reproduction use local repositories, and webhook capture/replay use local endpoints. See the full feature list.

Yes — the built-in dual-pane SFTP file browser shows your computer and a remote host side by side. Drag & drop between them, transfer folders recursively, rename, delete, change permissions, preview, and open files in the editor. Columns are resizable, and transfers stay smooth without freezing the file lists. Every write is crash-safe: files are staged and only moved into place once complete, so a failed or cancelled transfer never truncates or deletes the file it was replacing. If a connection is dropped while you're away — a server idle-timeout, sleep, or a flaky network — venus detects it and reconnects on its own, reloading the folder. An interrupted transfer isn't resumed; it fails safely and you can retry it.

Your first launch starts a 7-day Pro trial — no credit card and no account required. It unlocks the Pro feature set; Team sealed sharing requires the Team tier, and starting cloud sync needs an activated license. The trial start is cached locally and checked against a server record tied to a machine id when you're online, so reinstalling or deleting the local file does not restart it. When the trial ends, venus keeps working as the Free tier. Activate a license any time to keep Pro; the countdown is shown in the title-bar badge.

macOS (Apple Silicon, requires macOS 12 (Monterey) or later), Windows (10/11, 64-bit), and Linux (x86-64) are all available today — the Windows and Linux builds are recent betas. Mobile (iOS/Android) is planned later as an SSH- and SFTP-focused companion, since phones can't run local shells the way a desktop can.

venus is local-first by default. Your workspace data stays local by default. We record aggregate download counts and limited trial/license-check events (hashed, coarse), and a machine-associated trial start; terminal content and transferred files are never collected. SSH passwords and key passphrases are kept in your operating system's secure credential store (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, or the Linux Secret Service); the optional encrypted vault (Argon2id + XChaCha20-Poly1305) encrypts your saved host profiles at rest.

Optional Pro cloud sync uploads encrypted copies of your hosts, snippets, settings, and workspaces so they follow you across your devices. The sync service can't decrypt your synced content; it retains authentication metadata (plus opaque identifiers and timestamps), and licensing uses separate license/trial records. Secrets stay in that credential store and are not synced. Terminal output and transferred files never touch our servers. Disabling sync is different from deleting the cloud copy — use “Forget synced data” to remove it.

No account is needed to download and use venus or to start the trial. A signed license works offline; venus may occasionally check with the licensing server to confirm an active Pro subscription. Optional cloud sync, if you enable it, contacts the sync server too — but only to store and fetch encrypted blobs.

Pro is unlocked by a cryptographically signed license issued to you. It's verified on your device, so it keeps working offline. Online license and trial checks run at startup and periodically (about every six hours) when you're connected, with an offline fallback so a temporary outage doesn't lock you out.

Because there's a full 7-day free trial before any charge, we ask you to evaluate venus during the trial. Refund terms will be finalized at launch — reach out to info@tensordata.com and we'll help.

Yes — Pro includes config export/import, and optional end-to-end encrypted cloud sync, so you can carry your hosts, settings, snippets, and workspaces to another machine. (Secrets stay in that credential store and are re-entered on the new device for safety.)

The Team tier adds sealed sharing: seal a host or snippet to a specific teammate's key, end-to-end encrypted and revocable, so the server never sees it in plaintext. Team is a separate tier from the Pro trial — the trial unlocks the Pro feature set, not Team sharing. Team pricing will be announced at launch.

No — schedules run while venus is open. Scheduled SSH jobs connect non-interactively and fail closed: if authentication or a host-key confirmation would need to prompt (keyboard-interactive/2FA, or password auth with no saved secret), the run is skipped rather than left hanging.

No. venus is a proprietary, closed-source product of Tensordata Global Private Limited. Its source code is private and not publicly distributed.