tmux-agent-sidebar shows every coding agent pane in one place

The problem is many agents in many panes

tmux-agent-sidebar is one tmux sidebar that tracks every Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode pane across every session and window, so you can see status, background shells, prompts, Git state, activity and worktrees without switching windows. The framing is the interesting part, because the tool is not about one agent. The workflow it assumes is a developer running several agents at once, each in its own pane, each working on a different part of a task, and the cost of that workflow is that you lose track of them. An agent that is waiting for a permission prompt looks identical to one that is idle, and an agent that failed looks like one that is still thinking. The feature list names the four things the panel exists to solve. Every pane in one view, across all sessions and windows. Live metadata covering prompts, tool calls, response previews, background shell state, wait reasons, task progress and subagent trees, refreshing as the agents work. Worktrees, where you can spawn a fresh worktree and agent from the sidebar and tear it down, window, worktree and branch, in one keystroke. And desktop notifications when an agent finishes, needs permission or errors out.

Installing the plugin, and the wizard

The requirements are tmux 3.0 or newer, TPM, or the manual install described in the installation documentation, and the GitHub CLI, which is optional and needed only for pull request numbers in the Git tab. With TPM, installation is one line added to the tmux configuration:

set -g @plugin 'hiroppy/tmux-agent-sidebar'

You then reload tmux with tmux source ~/.tmux.conf and press prefix + I, and the install wizard either downloads a pre-built binary or builds from source. That last part matters, because the wizard is doing the build for you and the pre-built path is the one to prefer when the release artefacts cover your platform. The repository is a Rust project at version 0.13.0 on edition 2024, with the terminal interface built on ratatui and crossterm, an arboard crate for the clipboard, a vte terminal emulator parser for reading pane contents, and unicode-width for correct display of wide characters in the panel. The release profile strips symbols and enables link time optimisation, and there is a debug feature that forces the version, missing hooks and plugin notices to display even when nothing is pending, which the manifest describes as useful for iterating on the notices popup.

Wiring the hooks, which is where the agent integration happens

The plugin can only see an agent once that agent is told to report, so the hook setup is a separate step for each tool. For Claude Code you register the plugin inside Claude Code itself with the marketplace add and install commands. For Codex, the README describes a more interactive route: open a Codex pane, press prefix + e, click the yellow badge, copy the setup snippet and paste it into the Codex pane. For OpenCode there is a small local plugin bridge instead of per-event hook configuration, and the plugin file lives at .opencode/plugins/tmux-agent-sidebar.js. It is symlinked as a single file into the OpenCode plugin directory so it coexists with any existing plugins rather than replacing the directory. The OpenCode case is the one worth a second look, because the failure mode of a plugin directory conflict is that one tool silently stops working, and a single symlinked file is the shape that avoids it.

Worktrees and the Git tab are the operational half

The worktree feature is what turns a status display into a workflow tool. You can spawn a fresh worktree and an agent in it from the sidebar, and tear the whole thing down, window, worktree and branch, in one keystroke. That matters because the alternative is a sequence of shell commands for git worktree add, a tmux new-window, and a cleanup that leaves branches behind when you forget it. The documentation has a dedicated worktree lifecycle page, and the Git tab and activity log have their own pages along with the notifications page. The GitHub CLI being optional and only needed for pull request numbers tells you where the boundary is, since the sidebar reads Git state locally and only reaches out to GitHub when it wants a number for a branch. The keybinding reference and the tmux options reference are separate pages, and there is also a scripting page, which suggests the panel can be driven from outside rather than only by keystrokes.

Toggling the sidebar and the local build loop

The sidebar has two toggles, which is a small design decision with a real effect. prefix + e toggles the sidebar in the current window and prefix + E toggles it everywhere, so you can hide it in one pane while keeping it in the others, or take it away from all of them while you focus on writing code. For development, the README tells you to symlink the plugin directory to your working copy so builds are picked up without copying, and the commands are short:

rm -rf ~/.tmux/plugins/tmux-agent-sidebar
ln -s <path-to-this-repo> ~/.tmux/plugins/tmux-agent-sidebar
cargo build --release

You then toggle the sidebar off and on to pick up the new binary. The Claude Code plugin has its own wrinkle, because its install path holds a copy of the released binary that the hooks resolve before falling back to the release build directory, so a local build does not reach the hooks until that copy is replaced with a symlink to your working copy. The README also tells you to remove a stale release binary at bin/ in your repository if one is present, since both the tmux launcher and the hook script prefer that path over the cargo build output, which means a leftover file there silently masks your new build.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt tmux-agent-sidebar when you routinely run several coding agents in parallel tmux panes and need to see which one is waiting, which is blocked on permission and which has finished, without switching windows. Do not adopt it if you run one agent at a time in a single pane, since the panel adds a hook integration per agent for little benefit. Verify first that your tmux is version 3.0 or newer, that you use TPM or follow the manual install, and that the agent hook wiring for your specific tool is in place, since the sidebar only sees an agent once its hook is registered.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. hiroppy/tmux-agent-sidebar on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases