AI agents such as Claude and Copilot Studio can now work mainframe and IBM i sessions in WND Terminal, read-only unless IT allows more. The same release makes WND Terminal free for one person on their own computer, and brings a VS Code extension, code hints and a switch day kit for IT.
Teams that automate work on the mainframe tend to point a screen-scraping robot at a terminal and hope its script stays in step with the screens. Agents built on large language models can read a screen and decide what to do next. That only helps if the organization still decides what they may change.
AI agents, under your rules
WND Terminal now has an MCP server. On the desktop it’s wnd-mcp, installed with the app, and Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and LangChain can use it to work the sessions open in WND Terminal. On WND Terminal in a browser it’s /mcp on your gateway, so Claude, Copilot Studio, UiPath and n8n can connect from the cloud as a signed-in person or as a service account.
An agent can read the screen, type into fields, press keys and look up codes. Typing is held until it presses a key, and then the key is judged by the same rules as Ask WND. Agents are read-only by default. In ask mode a person approves each change, at the computer or on the gateway’s Approvals page. Password fields are never typed into. Card numbers and other sensitive values reach the agent as tokens such as [CARD 1]. Every action is in the audit log, and every agent session through the gateway is recorded.
Flows turn your tested procedures into tools. Someone who knows the screen writes a WND Terminal macro with a header saying its inputs and outputs and whether it writes, and the agent sees a tool with checked inputs. A sandbox mode plays session recordings in place of the host, so an agent can practice on a recording of a person doing the task before it goes near production.
WND Terminal Free for individuals
Developers, students, contractors and anyone learning the mainframe can now get WND Terminal with a personal license at portal.wndsoftware.com/free. Any email works. It’s the full app for Windows, Mac and Linux, with four sessions at once, and the license runs 90 days and renews from the same page. It doesn’t run on computers an organization manages or on the gateway, and up to 10 people at the same company can use it at a time. The VS Code extension works with it. For a team, a 30-day trial is at portal.wndsoftware.com/try.
For developers
WND Terminal in VS Code
The WND Terminal extension puts 3270, 5250 and UNIX sessions in a VS Code panel. It opens sessions from .wnd files in your project or from your Zowe profiles. It submits the JCL you’re editing and opens the job’s output beside it when the job ends, and it explains the abend or message under the cursor from the built-in reference.
Code hints under the screen
When an abend, a CICS abend, an SQLCODE or an IBM i message shows up, a one-line hint under the screen says what it means and what to do. It comes from the reference built into WND Terminal, so nothing leaves the computer and no AI model is used.
For IT
Switch day
wnd-discover runs on every PC and copies each person’s emulator sessions, keyboard maps and macros to a share, with stored passwords removed. The switch day report says who is ready, and the switch pack has the policy, the Intune and Configuration Manager inputs, and a set-up file for each person. WND Terminal imports that file on its first start, so nobody re-enters a host name.
More of your old macros
Extra!, Reflection, HostExplorer and PowerTerm macros can now use custom dialog boxes, the clipboard, binary and random-access files, and programs IT lists for Shell. Reflection’s VT macros run on UNIX sessions, and Extra! macros can work several sessions at once. Rumba .rmc and .csf macros convert to WND Terminal macros and run. When a macro has lines WND Terminal can’t run, Suggest a fix asks your organization’s AI model for the changes. Verify with a recording runs the macro against a recording of a person doing the task and says where it went another way.
Print jobs that go where they belong
Host print jobs from 3287 and IBM i printer sessions can now be routed by job name, form, user, printer or the words on the first page. They go to a printer, a PDF or text file in a folder, or an email, with the paper, margins, headers and footers IT sets.
Response times in your monitoring
Set TelemetryEndpoint and every desktop and the gateway send the response times people see to Datadog, Splunk Observability, Grafana, New Relic, Dynatrace, Elastic or any OpenTelemetry collector. Never screen contents or anything typed.
In the browser
Sessions that follow the person
In WND Terminal in a browser, sessions belong to the person, not the window. Close the laptop, then sign in on a tablet and attach the session with the same screen, still logged on.
The help desk joins with consent
A ticket from Send to help desk carries a link that lets the help desk ask to see the session. The person chooses viewing or control, the help desk sees a masked screen, and the visit is recorded.
The help desk joining a session →
For everyone at the keyboard
Screens in your language
Modern view can show host screens in another language, from your organization’s glossary first and an AI model for the rest when IT allows it. What you type and send to the host stays exactly as it was.
Accessibility, checked on every change
Every change to WND Terminal is checked against WCAG 2.1 A and AA rules over 30 screens, in dark and light, and a serious finding fails the build. The VPAT 2.5 report for buyers is published.
Same rules as always
Each new capability follows the policy and the audit log like everything else. IT can turn agents, AI translation, code hints and the older macros’ use of other programs on or off from Group Policy, Intune, a Mac configuration profile or policy.json. Sessions still go straight from the PC, or your own gateway, to your hosts. Nothing is sent to WND Software. Policy settings reference →
A proof of value is free for two to four weeks on your own systems. It can include an agent working against a recording of your own screens.
Current customers can download the release from the customer portal, with installers for Windows, Mac and Linux. Agents are off on the gateway until IT turns them on. Roaming sessions, the help desk joining a session and the gateway’s /mcp run through WND Terminal in a browser, which is in the Enterprise plan.