Help, user error or bug? kittens

[addicust]

Describe the bug
I cant get kitten quick-access-terminal to take any arguments or commands like run. even my keybind to kitty cd ~/.config doesnt work

To Reproduce
i set a hyprland keybind to quick-access-terminal and that works but ive been trying for four hours to get it to start by sourcing a ~/.config/kitty/alwaysontop.sh file that makes the prompt always stay on top of the quick-access-terminal, it works if you source it manually but thats not how i need it set up.

since it appears you cant pass arguments to it i tried figuring out remote control, not for beginners it seems.

https://github.com/swirepe/alwaysontop

^^ i love how this works with quick-access-terminal, but cant for the life of me get the config to load it, pass it as an argument, or do anything fancy in my .bashrc to only source this when in the quick-access-shell
(i was trying to set the title then read that in my .bashrc but 4 hours effort net no success.)

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Environment details
kitty 0.44.0 created by Kovid Goyal
Linux alarm 6.18.1-1-rpi #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Dec 16 01:02:12 UTC 2025 aarch64
Arch Linux ARM 6.18.1-1-rpi (/dev/tty)
Running under: Wayland (hyprland v0.52.2,) missing: blur icon
OpenGL: '3.1 (Core Profile) Mesa 25.3.2-arch1.1' Detected version: 3.1
Frozen: False
Fonts:
medium: FreeMono: /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/FreeMono.otf:0
Features: ()
bold: FreeMonoBold: /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/FreeMonoBold.otf:0
Features: ()
italic: FreeMonoOblique: /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/FreeMonoOblique.otf:0
Features: ()
bi: FreeMonoBoldOblique: /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/FreeMonoBoldOblique.otf:0
Features: ()
Paths:
kitty: /usr/bin/kitty
base dir: /usr/lib/kitty
extensions dir: /usr/lib/kitty/kitty
system shell: /bin/bash
System color scheme: no_preference. Applied color theme type: none
Loaded config files:
/home/alarm/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

Config options different from defaults:
background_opacity 0.7
cursor_trail 7
font_size 13.0
scrollback_lines 3500
scrollbar scrolled-and-hovered
scrollbar_handle_opacity 0.7
scrollbar_radius 0.35
scrollbar_track_hover_opacity 0.7
scrollbar_track_opacity 0.7
scrollbar_width 0.7
tab_bar_style slant

Important environment variables seen by the kitty process:
PATH /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/default/bin:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl:/home/alarm/.local/bin:/home/alarm/.local/bin
LANG en_US.UTF-8
SHELL /bin/bash
DISPLAY :0
WAYLAND_DISPLAY wayland-1
USER alarm
XCURSOR_SIZE 24
XDG_BACKEND wayland
XDG_SEAT seat0
XDG_SESSION_TYPE wayland
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP Hyprland
XDG_SESSION_CLASS user
XDG_VTNR 1
XDG_SESSION_ID 1
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR /run/user/1000
XDG_DATA_DIRS /home/alarm/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share

###what the terminal gave me
SystemError: bad format char passed to Py_BuildValue
^^[alarm:~]$ kitten quick-access-terminal run . /.config/kitty/alwaysontop.sh
[1.787] Timed out waiting for shell ['/bin/bash', '-l', '-i'] to quit while reading shell environment
[1.800] [glfw error 65544]: Notify: Failed to get server capabilities error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
^^[alarm:]$

[kovidgoyal]

You most definitely can pass arguments to kittens. kitten quick-access-terminal --help Beyond that I cant make head not tails of your question.

[addicust]

I tried to get it to work for about 6 hours. If it is possible to open the quick-access-terminal with a command, you may be the only one who knows how.

Like
Kitten quick-access-terminal sh -c 'source ~/.config/kitty/mytopdownterminal.sh' this and 1000 other combinations like it dont work. I know im just not using it right.

If i open the quick-access-terminal and type source ~/.config/kitty/mytopdownterminal.sh it works fine. Id like that to be its operation upon first using it at startup.

Only other option was trying to have something in my .bashrc to only source this script in the quick-access-terminal but i was unable to get the shell to differentiate that terminal from any other.

I have set a keybind to the quick-access-terminal but need it to source a bash .sh file because i like my drop down terminal to keep the prompt on top and return the output of commands below. It works if i manually source it but i cant for the life of me get quick-access-terminal to take a commandline argument in any way shape or form ive tried sockets and all sorts of stuff. Its a great tool but not simple.

I could execute it once at the beginning of the session to source this bash file but theres no way i have found to make it do that, besides typing it manually.

Thanks anyways i still use kitty its a great tool. Thanks for your time.

[kovidgoyal]

kitten quick-access-terminal sh -c "whatever" works as expected, for example:

kitten quick-access-terminal sh -c 'top'

will start the quick access terminal showing top. Note that this will happen only the very first time you run the command since on subsequent runs it will only toggle an existing quick access terminal.

As for detecting you are running in the quick access terminal, it's pretty easy, simply set an environment variable in your invocations, for example:

kitten quick-access-terminal -o kitty_override=env=IS_QUICK=1

[addicust]

kitten quick-access-terminal sh -c 'top' #this works
kitten quick-access-terminal sh -c 'source ~/.config/kitty/alwaysontop.sh' # returns bad characters .py something along those lines
Using the environmental variable I got my setup to work as intended!!
hyprland config contains:
exec-once = kitten quick-access-terminal -o kitty_override=env=IS_QUICK=1
exec-once = kitten quick-access-terminal #setting to start hidden did not work as intended for me so I start normally, then hide it immediately with this command.

in my .bashrc is:
if [[ "$IS_QUICK" == "1" ]]; then
# Source the alwaysontop.sh script
source ~/.config/kitty/alwaysontop.sh
export IS_QUICK=0
fi # since quick-access-terminal is the first one created it sources the file then changes the enviromental variable so following terminals do not source this file.

Thank you so much Kovid!! I knew you could help me better than anyone, thanks for your time!!