tmuxwatch is a Charmbracelet-powered dashboard that keeps eyes on every tmux session, window, and pane without ever leaving the terminal.

Highlights

• Live tmux snapshot: Polls list-sessions, list-windows, and list-panes, stitches the hierarchy together, and shows the latest capture-pane output per session.
• Tab-aware layout: The strip lists the grid plus every visible tmux session; click or shift+left/right to jump tabs, ctrl+m toggles full-screen, and esc returns to the grid.
• Keyboard & mouse aware: / to search, arrow/PageUp/PageDown to scroll, collapse cards with z/Z, maximise via ctrl+m or the [^] control, X to kill a focused stale session, ctrl+X to clean all stale sessions, and mouse clicks/scrolls to focus, collapse, close cards, or switch tabs.
• Command palette (ctrl+P): Run actions (refresh, show hidden, clean stale) from a centered overlay.
• Automation friendly: --dump prints the current tmux topology as JSON for scripts or debugging.

Install & Run

# Homebrew (recommended)
brew tap steipete/tap
brew install tmuxwatch
tmuxwatch --version  # should print tmuxwatch 0.9

# Updating later
brew update
brew upgrade tmuxwatch

# Or install directly with Go tooling
go install github.com/steipete/tmuxwatch/cmd/tmuxwatch@latest

# best practice: spawn inside tmux so key bindings work as expected
tmux new-session -d -s watch './gorunfresh --trace-mouse'
tmux attach -t watch

# prefer to run outside tmux?
./gorunfresh --dump   # runs directly unless TMUXWATCH_FORCE_TMUX=1 is set
./gorunfresh --watch  # starts poltergeist + polter --watch to auto-restart after successful builds
./scripts/run-hot.sh  # single command that starts daemon in the background and launches tmuxwatch with hot reload

Press q (or double ctrl+c) to exit. Prefer running tmuxwatch in its own tmux session to keep the UI isolated from your workspaces. For local development you can substitute ./gorunfresh --debug-click 30,10 --trace-mouse inside the session to replay a mouse event while inspecting BubbleZone logs.

CLI Flags

• --interval <duration>: tmux poll frequency (default 1s).
• --tmux <path>: tmux binary to execute (defaults to $PATH).
• --dump: emit the current snapshot as indented JSON and exit.
• --version: print the build/version string.

Keyboard & Mouse Cheat Sheet

/ or ctrl+f        open search; type to filter sessions/windows/panes
esc                clear search, close palette, or leave detail view
shift+left/right   switch tabs
H                  show hidden sessions
X                  kill the focused stale session
ctrl+X             kill every stale session
ctrl+P             open/close the command palette
ctrl+m             maximise/restore the focused session
z / Z              collapse focused session / expand all sessions
q / ctrl+c         quit (double ctrl+c quits even if pane is alive)
mouse              click `[^]/[v]` to maximise/restore, `[-]/[+]` to collapse/expand, `[x]` to hide; scroll to browse logs

Architecture

• cmd/tmuxwatch/: CLI entry point, flag parsing, Bubble Tea program setup.
• internal/tmux/: thin wrapper over the tmux binary (snapshot capture, capture-pane, send-keys, kill-session, option queries).
• internal/ui/: Bubble Tea model split into focused files (model, update, handlers, cards, status, palette, overlay, etc.).
• docs/: contributor docs (AGENTS.md, idiomatic-go.md).

The UI intentionally avoids third-party “magic”; it leans on Bubble Tea + Lip Gloss primitives so behaviour is explicit.

Development Workflow

Use the pnpm scripts to mirror the Go tooling:

pnpm format  # gofumpt -w .
pnpm lint    # golangci-lint run
pnpm test    # go test ./...
pnpm build   # go build ./cmd/tmuxwatch
pnpm start   # runs ./gorunfresh (prefer inside tmux)

You can still call the Go targets directly:

# format + lint
make fmt
make lint

# run tests (includes table-driven/unit tests in internal/ui and internal/tmux)
go test ./...

# fresh rebuild & run inside tmux (guards against outside usage)
./gorunfresh --dump  # validate tmux JSON snapshot; respects TMUXWATCH_FORCE_TMUX

go run ./cmd/tmuxwatch --dump  # (inside tmux) validate tmux JSON snapshot for debugging

Guidelines live in docs/idiomatic-go.md; treat it as required reading. Key points:

• Always run the app inside tmux; tests that touch tmux spawn/destroy their own sessions.
• Run gofumpt, golangci-lint, and govulncheck before opening a PR.
• Table-driven tests go beside their packages (*_test.go); fixtures live under testdata/.
• The gorunfresh helper clears cache and re-runs the app but refuses to execute unless you launch it from within tmux.

Roadmap (short list)

• Theming + palette customization (Catppuccin/Dracula).
• Configurable capture depth & poll interval via config file.
• Pane interaction history and saved layouts.

License

Released under the MIT License.