| name | cmux-custom-sidebar |
| description | Build a custom cmux sidebar from a plain-language request. Use when the user asks for a custom sidebar, a sidebar that shows their workspaces/tabs/PRs/clock, a vibe-coded sidebar, or anything involving files in ~/.config/cmux/sidebars/. Covers authoring the interpreted SwiftUI-style file, enabling the beta flag, selecting it, and iterating with hot reload. |
cmux Custom Sidebar
cmux renders custom sidebars from a small SwiftUI-style file at runtime: no Xcode, no build step, no signing. The file hot-reloads on save, binds to live cmux state (workspaces, tabs, git, PRs, clock), and runs real cmux commands on tap.
The person asking is describing a result ("a sidebar that shows my workspaces and lets me jump between them"), not an implementation. Make the engineering decisions for them; do not ask them about SwiftUI, files, or syntax.
This skill is the workflow summary. Read the complete authoring contract (every supported view, modifier, language feature, and data field) before writing a non-trivial sidebar:
cmux docs sidebars
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/manaflow-ai/cmux/main/docs/custom-sidebars.md
Workflow
- Enable the beta (once): Settings > Beta features > Custom sidebars (
customSidebars.beta.enabled). If a written sidebar does not appear in the picker, check this first.
- Write a named file at
~/.config/cmux/sidebars/<name>.swift. The name becomes the menu label; use short kebab-case. The file is a single SwiftUI-style view expression (no struct, no var body, no imports). A .json variant exists for static layouts; prefer .swift for anything dynamic.
- Validate and select:
cmux sidebar validate <name>
cmux sidebar <name>
The user can also right-click the sidebar toggle button to pick it.
