slay-pty

name	slay-pty
description	Interact with PTY terminal sessions via the slay CLI
trigger	auto

PTY commands interact with terminal sessions managed by the SlayZone app — the actual terminal tabs you see in each task. Use these to read output, send input, and orchestrate AI coding agents programmatically.

All commands support ID prefix matching.

Commands

• slay pty list [--json] — list active PTY sessions.

  • Shows session ID, task ID, terminal mode, current state, and age

• slay pty buffer <id> — dump the full terminal buffer content to stdout.

  • Useful for reading what an AI agent has output without streaming

• slay pty follow <id> [--full] — stream PTY output in real time.

  • --full replays the existing buffer first before streaming new output
  • Streams until the session exits

• slay pty submit <id> [text] [--wait] [--no-wait] [--timeout <ms>] — default for sending input. High-level text submission with AI-mode awareness.

  • If no text argument is given, reads from stdin (pipe-friendly)
  • Appends a trailing newline to submit
  • For AI modes like claude-code, internal newlines are encoded as Kitty shift-enter sequences (\x1b[13;2u) so multi-line text is submitted as a single input
  • Wait behavior: by default waits for the session to reach the idle state (= AI CLI ready for input) before sending. Automatic for AI modes. Use --no-wait to send immediately (default for plain terminal modes)
  • Timeout defaults to 60 seconds

• slay pty type <id> <data> (alias: write) — send raw bytes to PTY stdin. Use only when submit is wrong — e.g. appending text mid-prompt without submitting, or sending exact byte sequences. No newline added, no encoding.

• Key helper subcommands (slay pty <key> <id>) — send a single control sequence:

  • arrow-up, arrow-down, arrow-left, arrow-right — cursor / history nav
  • tab, shift-tab — autocomplete; shift-tab cycles claude-code modes (plan/auto-accept/normal)
  • backspace — delete char
  • escape — ESC key (double-invoke to cancel a claude-code generation)
  • cancel — Ctrl+C interrupt

• slay pty wait <id> [--state <state>] [--timeout <ms>] [--json] — block until a session reaches a specific state.

  • Default state: idle (AI ready for input)
  • Default timeout: 60 seconds
  • Exit codes: 0 = reached state, 2 = timeout, 1 = session died

• slay pty respawn <task-id> — kill + remount a task's main PTY. Task must be open in the app. Task-id prefix supported.

• slay pty create <task-id> [--mode <m>] [--label <l>] [--no-wait] [--timeout <ms>] — create a new terminal tab (new group) for a task.

  • Auto-opens the task in the app (PTY only spawns when the renderer mounts the tab)
  • --mode defaults to terminal (plain shell). Use claude-code, codex, etc. for agent tabs
  • Waits for the PTY to appear in /api/pty by default (5s timeout). --no-wait returns immediately
  • Prints the new session id

• slay pty split <id> [--no-wait] [--timeout <ms>] — add a new pane to the same group as an existing tab/session.

  • <id> accepts a full session id (taskId:tabId) or just the tab id; prefix matching supported
  • New pane is always plain terminal mode
  • Wait behavior identical to create

• slay pty kill <id> — terminate a PTY session.

Orchestration patterns

Submit a prompt to a Claude Code session and wait for completion:

slay pty submit <id> "Fix the failing tests in src/auth.ts"
slay pty wait <id> --state idle --timeout 300000
slay pty buffer <id>  # read the result

Pipe multi-line input:

cat prompt.md | slay pty submit <id>