zjbar

zjbar

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A Zellij status bar plugin with a Tokyo Night powerline theme and optional AI coding agent activity awareness.

Features

• Powerline tab bar — Tokyo Night themed tab bar with sharp powerline arrows between segments
• Session & mode display — shows session name and input mode (NORMAL, LOCKED, PANE, etc.) with color-coded pills
• Clickable tabs — click any tab to switch
• Optional AI coding agent integration — live activity indicators, permission flash, desktop notifications, and click-to-focus (supports Claude Code, CodeBuddy, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, and other compatible tools)
• Multi-instance sync — all Zellij tabs show a unified view of all AI sessions

Install

Prerequisites

• Zellij

Option 1: Use release binary

Add the zjbar plugin to your Zellij layout file (e.g. ~/.config/zellij/layouts/zjbar.kdl):

layout {
    default_tab_template {
        children
        pane size=1 borderless=true {
            plugin location="https://github.com/imroc/zjbar/releases/download/v1.2.0/zjbar.wasm"
        }
    }
}

Then start Zellij with this layout:

zellij --layout ~/.config/zellij/layouts/zjbar.kdl

See layout.kdl for a full example with all available color and style options.

Option 2: Build from source

Prerequisites: Rust

git clone https://github.com/imroc/zjbar.git
cd zjbar
make install

This builds the WASM binary, copies it to ~/.config/zellij/plugins/, and installs the layout files. Then start Zellij:

zellij --layout zjbar

AI Tool Integration (optional)

zjbar supports multiple AI coding agents. Each tool uses its own bridge to forward events to the zjbar plugin via zellij pipe.

Claude Code / CodeBuddy

Install the zjbar plugin to automatically register hooks:

/plugin marketplace add imroc/zjbar
/plugin install zjbar@zjbar

Restart Claude Code / CodeBuddy for hooks to take effect.

To update to the latest version:

/plugin update

OpenCode

Add the zjbar plugin to your opencode.json:

{
  "plugin": ["zjbar-opencode@latest"]
}

Then start OpenCode inside a Zellij session with the zjbar layout — activity indicators will appear automatically.

To update, restart OpenCode — it will automatically fetch the latest version since @latest is specified.

Codex CLI

Configure Codex to use the zjbar notify script:

make install-codex-hooks

This copies the notify script and icon to ~/.codex/zjbar/ and adds a notify entry to your Codex config (~/.codex/config.toml). When Codex finishes a turn, zjbar shows the Done indicator and sends a desktop notification with the task summary. The repo can be safely deleted after installation. Override the Codex config directory with CODEX_HOME env var.

To update, re-run make install-codex-hooks from the latest repo.

To uninstall:

make uninstall-codex-hooks

Gemini CLI

First, clone the repo (or download it):

git clone https://github.com/imroc/zjbar.git
cd zjbar

Then install the hooks:

make install-gemini-hooks

This copies the hook script to ~/.gemini/zjbar/ and registers the hooks in ~/.gemini/settings.json. The repo can be safely deleted after installation.

To uninstall:

make uninstall-gemini-hooks

zjbar tracks Gemini's full agent lifecycle: Thinking, Tool use, and Done states.

Other tools

zjbar uses a unified JSON event protocol. Any AI coding tool can integrate by sending events via zellij pipe --name zjbar. See the How It Works section for details.

Desktop notifications (optional)

brew install terminal-notifier

When installed, desktop notifications are sent for PermissionRequest, Notification, and Stop events by default. Notifications include context-aware message summaries extracted from the AI tool's transcript:

• Stop — last assistant message + tool usage stats (e.g. 📝2 ✏️3 ▶5)
• PermissionRequest — the specific command or file path being requested
• Notification — the notification message from the AI tool

You can customize which events trigger notifications and the notification mode via ~/.config/zellij/plugins/zjbar.json or the settings menu (click the session name in the status bar):

{
  "flash": "brief",
  "elapsed_time": true,
  "notifications": "always",
  "notify_events": ["PermissionRequest", "Notification", "Stop"]
}