tmux for coding agents

tmux is a terminal multiplexer: it runs programs inside panes that survive terminal closures and can be inspected, driven, and re-attached programmatically. This skill covers non-interactive (programmatic) tmux use: the way a coding agent should drive it from the shell. Grounded in the official tmux wiki.

When to use tmux (and when not)

Use tmux when you need any of:

• a process to outlive the agent turn / terminal (long builds, servers, watches)
• interactivity: REPLs, programs that prompt, TUI apps (vim, htop, fzf)
• a real TTY (tools that refuse without isatty, or need a fixed window size)
• to peek at live output while it runs, or let the human attach and watch

Skip tmux when plain redirection is enough: cmd > out.log 2>&1 or cmd & / nohup is simpler and you never need to read a TUI.