tmux Skill

---

name: tmux

description: Remote-control tmux sessions for interactive CLIs by sending keystrokes and scraping pane output.

metadata:

{ "openclaw": { "emoji": "🧵", "os": ["darwin", "linux"], "requires": { "bins": ["tmux"] } } }

---

# tmux Skill

Use tmux only when you need an interactive TTY. Prefer exec background mode for long-running, non-interactive tasks.

Default Server — No Custom Sockets

**Always use the default tmux server.** Do NOT use `-S` custom sockets. The user needs to `tmux attach` easily without knowing obscure socket paths.

Session Naming

**Convention:** `oc-${project}-${feature}` (e.g. `oc-knowhere-date-range-picker`, `oc-deck-auth-flow`)

Quickstart

SESSION=oc-myproject-feature

tmux new-session -d -s "$SESSION" -c ~/projects/myproject
tmux send-keys -t "$SESSION" 'claude --dangerously-skip-permissions' Enter
tmux capture-pane -p -J -t "$SESSION" -S -200

After starting a session, tell the user:

To monitor: tmux attach -t $SESSION

Targeting panes and naming

Sending input safely

`send-keys`. These apps may treat a fast text+Enter sequence as paste/multi-line input

and not submit. Send text and `Enter` as separate commands with a small delay:

tmux send-keys -t target -l -- "$cmd" && sleep 0.1 && tmux send-keys -t target Enter

Watching output

Spawning processes

Orchestrating Coding Agents (Codex, Claude Code)

tmux excels at running multiple coding agents in parallel:

# Create sessions in different worktrees
tmux new-session -d -s oc-project-fix1 -c ~/projects/project-fix1
tmux new-session -d -s oc-project-fix2 -c ~/projects/project-fix2

# Launch agents
tmux send-keys -t oc-project-fix1 'claude --dangerously-skip-permissions' Enter
tmux send-keys -t oc-project-fix2 'codex --full-auto' Enter

# Send a prompt (text + Enter separated by delay)
tmux send-keys -t oc-project-fix1 -l -- "Fix the date picker styling." && sleep 0.1 && tmux send-keys -t oc-project-fix1 Enter

# Poll for completion (check if shell prompt returned)
for sess in oc-project-fix1 oc-project-fix2; do
  if tmux capture-pane -p -t "$sess" -S -3 | grep -q "❯"; then
    echo "$sess: DONE"
  else
    echo "$sess: Running..."
  fi
done

# Get full output
tmux capture-pane -p -t oc-project-fix1 -S -500

**Tips:**

Cleanup