agent-shell-workspace

A dedicated tab-bar workspace for agent-shell buffers in Emacs.

Toggle into an "Agents" tab with a compact sidebar, buffer isolation, and tiling — then toggle back to your regular work. Non-agent buffers never pollute the workspace.

Features

• Dedicated tab-bar tab — one keypress to switch between coding and agent monitoring
• Compact sidebar — shows each agent's icon, status, and name at a glance
• Status icons — ● ready, ◐ working, ◉ waiting for input (red), ✔ finished (cyan), ○ initializing, ✕ killed
• Buffer isolation — opening a file or switching to a non-agent buffer auto-redirects to your editing tab
• Tiling — view 2–8 agents side-by-side in an auto-arranged grid
• Quick switch — peek at agents by moving up/down in the sidebar without losing focus
• Agent management — kill, restart, rename, set mode, interrupt — all from the sidebar

Requirements

• Emacs 29.1+
• agent-shell 0.24.2+

Installation

use-package (Emacs 29+)

(use-package agent-shell-workspace
  :vc (:url "https://github.com/gveres/agent-shell-workspace")
  :ensure t
  :after agent-shell
  :bind (:map agent-shell-command-map ("w" . agent-shell-workspace-toggle)))

Manual

Download agent-shell-workspace.el, place it in your load-path, then:

(require 'agent-shell-workspace)
(define-key agent-shell-command-map (kbd "w") 'agent-shell-workspace-toggle)

Usage

Press C-c A w (or your configured binding) to toggle the workspace. The Agents tab opens with a sidebar on the left and your most recent agent in the main area.

Sidebar keybindings

Key	Action
RET	Focus agent in main area
s	Toggle quick-switch (peek on cursor move)
a	Add agent to tiled view
x	Remove agent from tiled view
t	Un-tile back to single focus
R	Rename agent buffer
c	Create new agent
k	Kill agent process
r	Restart agent
d	Delete all killed buffers
m	Set session mode
M	Cycle session mode
C-c C-c	Interrupt agent
g	Refresh sidebar
q	Close sidebar

Tiling

Press a on each agent you want to tile. The first press marks the agent (shown with ▫), the second triggers the split. Add up to 8 agents. Press x to remove one, t to un-tile entirely.

Buffer isolation

While in the Agents tab, any attempt to display a non-agent buffer (via find-file, xref, switch-to-buffer, etc.) automatically switches you to your previous tab first. Agent-related buffers (diffs, traffic logs) are allowed through.

Acknowledgements

Status detection logic adapted from agent-shell-manager.el by Jethro Kuan.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later