Launch a script in a new Ghostty window

Open Ghostty in a specific project directory, run a setup script (source env vars, start a container, load credentials), then drop into an interactive shell when the script finishes.

The trick

The intuitive open -na Ghostty --args -e /bin/bash -c "./scripts/setup-env.sh; exec $SHELL -i" looks right, but it fails in two ways:

1. Two tabs open instead of one. Ghostty's -e only consumes the next single token as the executable. Everything after that (-c, the script path, the shell line) is parsed as separate Ghostty flags, and -c triggers a second tab.
2. command not found for Homebrew tools. Switching to --command= fixes the tab issue, but Ghostty wraps the value in bash --noprofile --norc. Your .zprofile and .zshrc never run, so /opt/homebrew/bin is missing from PATH and anything installed via Homebrew is not found.

Working configuration

{
  "label": "Open project shell (prod)",
  "type": "command",
  "command": "open",
  "args": [
    "-na", "Ghostty",
    "--args",
    "--working-directory=/Users/you/Code/your-project",
    "--command=zsh -lc './scripts/setup-env.sh prod; exec zsh -i'"
  ]
}

Paste this as an action inside any service, group, or shortcut. Replace these three placeholders with your own values:

• --working-directory=…: absolute path to the project the shell should open in.
• ./scripts/setup-env.sh: path (relative to the working directory) of the script you want to run.
• prod: any arguments your script expects. Omit if there are none.

Why this works

• open -na Ghostty launches a fresh Ghostty instance and forwards everything after --args to it. Direct CLI launch is not supported on macOS, so going through open is required.
• --working-directory= tells Ghostty where to set the new window's cwd.
• --command= takes the whole shell line as one value, so Ghostty cannot misparse it into a second tab.
• The value zsh -lc '...' starts an interactive login shell. -l triggers your shell init files (.zprofile, .zshrc), so PATH picks up /opt/homebrew/bin and the script can call anything you'd normally use in a terminal.
• exec zsh -i at the end replaces the script process with an interactive shell, so the window stays open after the setup runs.

Prerequisites

• Ghostty installed (tested on 1.3.x)
• zsh as the user's shell (default on macOS 10.15+)
• Any binaries your setup script calls (e.g. aws, docker) must end up on PATH once your .zprofile or .zshrc has run. If they work when you open a normal terminal, they'll work here.