49 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
 
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# How to use tmux control mode? (tmuxai.dev)
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## Metadata
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| Field | Value |
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|---|---|
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| Institute | Molodetz Institute — Research & Retrieval Division |
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| Subject | shell-multiplexer-auto-attach |
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| Document type | Source Dossier |
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| Tier | 1 |
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| Source title | How to use tmux control mode? |
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| Source URL | https://tmuxai.dev/tmux-control-mode/ |
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| Source publisher / author | tmuxai.dev |
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| Source type | blog post |
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| Source date (published) | Unknown — not stated |
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| Date researched | 2026-10-09 |
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| Researched by | tai (agent), model: Claude Sonnet 5, on behalf of retoor |
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| Research method | web search synthesis |
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| Confidence | Medium |
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| Status | Active |
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## Summary
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Explains tmux's control mode (`-C`/`-CC`): a text-only protocol where a client writes newline-terminated tmux commands to stdin, and each command's output is framed between a `%begin` line (with timestamp and command number) and a closing `%end` (success) or `%error` (failure). Asynchronous events arrive as `%`-prefixed notifications that never appear inside an output block.
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## Key findings
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- Deterministic framing (`%begin`...`%end`/`%error`) means a program can reliably know where one command's output stops, which plain `send-keys`+`capture-pane` polling cannot guarantee on its own.
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- Notifications are guaranteed not to interleave inside a command's output block — a real concurrency guarantee useful for building a parser.
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- `-CC` additionally disables echo, which matters for programmatic clients that don't want their own commands echoed back.
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## Pros / strengths
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- Gives the exact framing contract (`%begin`/`%end`/`%error`) needed to write a correct parser for a control-mode client, which is the structured alternative to screen-scraping `capture-pane` output.
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## Cons / limitations / caveats
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- A blog post, not tmux's own specification — cross-check framing details against the tmux source or man page before depending on them in production code.
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## Relevance to tai
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This is the mechanism for the "events" requirement in the proposal — control mode's notification stream is how a tai layer would receive pane-output/window-change events asynchronously rather than polling `capture-pane` in a loop.
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## Changelog
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| Date | Change |
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| 2026-10-09 | Initial dossier created. |
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