Termix v26.10.1 - Plugins (official + community) self-hosted server management (SSH, remote desktop, file management, docker, host metrics, etc.)

GitHub: github.com/Termix-SSH/Termix Docs: termix.site Discord: discord.gg/jVQGdvHDrf Hello, Yesterday was the official release of Termix official + community plugins. With the changes in this and last week’s update, all primary functions of Termix have been moved to plugins, and a small UI redesign came along with it. If you’re not familiar, Termix is a free, open source, self-hosted server management tool that is now built on plugins. The core keeps your hosts, credentials, users, sharing, sessions, etc. Everything else, like the SSH terminal, remote desktop (VNC, RDP, Telnet), file manager, Docker, and metrics, is a plugin you can turn on, off, or remove and re-download. You can even develop your own and let others install them through a plugin browser. It runs on web, desktop, and mobile. You can think of it as a free (no bullshit) version of Termius. We are trusted by tens of thousands of homelabbers and many companies as well. A full list of all plugins and what they do can be found here: docs.termix.site/plugins As for why this decision was made, here are a few reasons: The community voted in favor of plugins Improved security Easier maintenance Cleaner UI (remove features you don’t need) Faster loading times Update only what you need + automatic updates, even with Docker Custom plugins However, the most important change is the eventual reduction of AI usage in this project. Previously, many PRs would be opened on the main Termix repository adding massive features or changing huge components, and they were clearly AI generated. As a developer, it was difficult to just close those PRs knowing how much time it would save to just merge them. Not to mention the dopamine hit of having another user add such a huge feature to the app without me having to do it at all. With plugins, people can generate all the AI plugins they want without other users being impacted by AI generated code. Of course, I’m also guilty of using AI in this project (especially recently). I highly suggest reading my comment below for more information. Many of you may remember a time when Termix was fully written by humans, but that hasn’t been the case in recent updates (I’d say around v2.3.0 with the UI redesign is where things changed). That’s mostly because the feature set of Termix has moved outside my areas of expertise. A lot of the terminal and file management code is still handwritten by me or my partner, because that’s what we’re most interested in, most skilled at, and have the most fun writing. However, features like the remote desktop integration or network topology tend to contain a lot of AI generated code, since they were requests from other people and not necessarily within our original interests for the project. That code is still reviewed by humans, but it does tend to reduce the overall quality of the project. This has also started to affect my interest in working on the project. Even though you get a dopamine hit watching AI do something that would have taken you hours, it’s so temporary. I got super burnt out working on previous versions, became very uninterested in the project, and started working on other things. I also started to lie a lot about AI usage in the project because I was ashamed of it, knowing I could have done it all without AI (I’ll talk about this more in the comments too). My hope is that with this plugin system, we’ll be able to spend more time writing code with AI as just a useful assistant and working on the features we actually want to add, while letting the community build what they want without us having to intervene and spend time decluttering AI generated code. Anyway, rant over. In case you’re curious about how community plugins are reviewed, it’s pretty simple. First, they’re reviewed by Qwen3.6 (a local AI model running on AWS servers, so the AI isn’t trained on whatever garbage gets sent in, and to reduce prompt injection). This is just to save reviewers time by filtering out obvious malware. It’s only the first step. Once a plugin is approved by the automated system, a human (most likely me, to be honest) will review it and do a quick test. Then it’s deployed and shows up in the in-app store within 20 or so minutes. If a developer pushes an update, it goes through the same process. As of now, no community plugins have been published yet since the system just launched. Official and community plugins can be updated with a single button press in the UI. If you are concerned about security, you can read more here: docs.termix.site/configure/security (essentially all downloaded plugins are crypto-graphically signed using a central private key which is then verified by the server + the file signature is checked) What’s next: Creating a professional set of videos for all 34 official plugins Removing the external guacd requirement Allowing plugins to create custom UI themes and layouts Multiple new plugins (database editor, simple backup system, proxy manager, and some networking tools I built for my homelab that I find useful) Offline version of the mobile app It’s taken about 3 months, or hundreds of hours, to get to this point with the plugin system, and I’m very satisfied with how it came out. I’ll probably take a bit of a break to focus on some other things, but I’ll be back shortly, hopefully re-motivated. Growth has also been super slow recently (which is my main motivation, getting people to switch from paid services), so hopefully something comes out of this post. If your a content creator, feel free to reach out to me before developing a video or article, like many others have done in the past. Feel free to post this to other subreddits as well. If you have any issues or feature requests, please please please don’t post them here unless it’s just a question. It’s super hard to keep track of them in a Reddit post, so I highly encourage you to open a GitHub issue on the main repo, and AI will triage it for you. I really hope you enjoy this update. A lot of work went into designing the UI to be user friendly while also looking good and professional! I posted this super early for me, so I’m going back to bed, but I’ll respond to comments later. Thanks everyone, Luke