tmux-pane

name	tmux-pane
description	Drive the pre-configured workbench and document-viewer tmux panes alongside this conversation. Use for long-running processes, monitoring, parallel work, or displaying files for visual review.

tmux-pane

Two tmux panes are pre-configured per Claude session by the SessionStart hook (~/.claude/tmux-panes-setup.sh). They are namespaced by this Claude pane's tmux id (${TMUX_PANE#%}) so concurrent Claude sessions in other windows don't collide:

• Workbench — long-running processes, log tails, builds, tests. Title: claude-workbench-<tag>. Pane ID in /tmp/claude-tmux-pane-<tag>.
• Viewer — display files, markdown, diffs, images via bat, glow, git diff, less, etc. Title: claude-viewer-<tag>. Pane ID in /tmp/claude-viewer-pane-<tag>.

The SessionStart additionalContext in your system prompt always contains the resolved pane_id values for this session — prefer those over recomputing.

Recover the pane IDs

TAG="${TMUX_PANE#%}"
WB=$(cat "/tmp/claude-tmux-pane-${TAG}")
VW=$(cat "/tmp/claude-viewer-pane-${TAG}")

Verify they're alive (scoped to this window only):

tmux list-panes -F '#{pane_id} #{pane_title}' \
  | grep -E "claude-workbench-${TAG}|claude-viewer-${TAG}"

Never look up panes by the bare titles claude-workbench / claude-viewer — those don't exist any more, and matching across windows would pull in another Claude session's panes.

If a pane is missing (e.g. user closed it, or you're not in tmux), re-run the hook script: ~/.claude/tmux-panes-setup.sh.

Operate a pane

tmux send-keys -t "$WB" '<command>' Enter        # send a command
tmux capture-pane -t "$WB" -p -S -50             # read last 50 lines
tmux send-keys -t "$WB" C-c                       # interrupt

Same for $VW.

When to use which

• Workbench: tail -f, npm run dev, cargo watch, aws-vault exec ... just smoke-test, anything that runs for a while.
• Viewer: bat README.md, glow PRD-09.md, git diff main...HEAD, less <(curl ...). Use it to put a document in front of the user without dumping it into the transcript.

Rules

• Always read pane output after sending a command to confirm it worked.
• Don't kill the panes — they're persistent across the session by design.
• Don't split new panes yourself; reuse what the hook gave you.
• If $ARGUMENTS are provided, run them in the workbench as the first command.

$ARGUMENTS