Why doesn't my command work?

Hotwire is not fully command-compatible with a traditional Unix terminal+shell; for more background on this see HotwireVsBinSh.

How do I make it work?

If the command requires simple text input, type Ctrl-I. This is sufficient for applications such as the mysql and python shells.

For real terminal applications (e.g. top, vi), you can type term top. Hotwire has a default list of terminal applications internally - if your application is public, please file an issue to get it added to this list.

Another alternative is to use a real GUI version of the command. nemiver instead of gdb, for example.