tmux

tmux Skill

Use tmux as a programmable terminal multiplexer for interactive work.

Targeting panes and windows

• Target format: {session}:{window}.{pane}, defaults to :0.0 if omitted.
• Inspect sessions: tmux list-sessions. Do this if it's not clear which session to use.
• Inspect windows: tmux list-windows -t {session_name}. Do this if it's not clear which window to use in a session.

Sending input safely

• Prefer literal sends to avoid shell splitting: tmux send-keys -t {target} -l -- "$cmd"
• When composing inline commands, use single quotes or ANSI C quoting to avoid expansion: tmux ... send-keys -t {target} -- $'python3 -m http.server 8000'.
• To send control keys: tmux ... send-keys -t {target} C-c, C-d, C-z, Escape, etc.
• For example, to grab the logs on the third screen of the 'map' session, you'd run tmux send-keys -t map:2 'ls -laht' C-m.

Watching output

• Capture recent 200 lines of history (joined lines to avoid wrapping artifacts): tmux capture-pane -p -J -t {target} -S -200.

• When giving instructions to a user, explicitly print a copy/paste monitor command alongside the action don't assume they remembered the command.

• -t/--target pane target (required)

• -p/--pattern regex to match (required); add -F for fixed string

• -T timeout seconds (integer, default 15)

• -i poll interval seconds (default 0.5)

• -l history lines to search from the pane (integer, default 1000)

• Exits 0 on first match, 1 on timeout. On failure prints the last captured text to stderr to aid debugging.