TAME — Terminal Agent Management Environment

An intelligent terminal multiplexer for managing multiple parallel AI agent sessions. Think tmux, but aware that AI agents are running and needing attention.

TAME does not launch or orchestrate agents. You create PTY-backed shell sessions and run whatever CLI agent you want (claude, codex, aider, gemini, a custom script, etc.). TAME monitors the PTY output of each session using configurable regex patterns and notifies you when something needs your attention.

Features

Session management

• Create, switch, rename, pause (SIGSTOP), resume (SIGCONT), and delete terminal sessions
• Batch pause/resume all sessions at once
• Session groups — organize sessions into named, collapsible groups
• Session export — save full session output to a timestamped text file

Pattern-based status detection

• Configurable regexes detect prompts, errors, completion, progress, and weak prompts
• Agent-specific profiles — built-in pattern sets for claude, codex, and training workloads; select a profile when creating a session
• Batch "last match wins" — within a single output chunk, the final matching pattern determines the state (e.g. an error on line 1 followed by a prompt on line 5 yields WAITING, not ERROR)
• Weak prompt timeout gating — lines ending in ? are treated as weak prompts; TAME waits a configurable timeout (default 3 s) before promoting to WAITING, cancelling if new output arrives
• State machine debounce — 500 ms debounce window prevents flicker on rapid transitions; priority states (ERROR_SEEN, NEEDS_INPUT) bypass debounce

Smart notifications

• Desktop — notify-send (Linux) / osascript (macOS) with urgency levels
• Audio — pygame, simpleaudio, or terminal bell fallback
• In-app toasts — auto-dismissing overlay notifications
• Sidebar flash — visual alert on the sidebar for the session that needs attention
• Slack — webhook integration with verbosity filtering (errors-only to everything)
• Generic webhooks — JSON POST to any URL with custom headers
• Do Not Disturb — time-range DND mode suppresses all channels
• Per-event cooldowns prevent notification storms

Terminal emulation

• Full PTY — each session runs in a real pseudo-terminal (pty.openpty()) with proper signal handling
• VT100 emulation — pyte-based TAMEScreen with alternate screen buffer support (modes 47, 1047, 1048, 1049)
• Tmux snapshot rendering — captures and renders tmux pane content with ANSI sanitization
• Keystroke passthrough — arrow keys, Ctrl sequences, Alt combos, Tab, function keys all forwarded to the active PTY
• Async I/O — loop.add_reader() epoll integration with Textual's asyncio loop; no threads
• UTF-8 safety — per-session incremental decoders handle multi-byte characters split across PTY reads

Usage tracking

Auto-detects AI CLI usage info from output:

• Messages remaining (e.g. "Opus messages: 42/100 remaining")
• Token counts
• Model name
• Rate-limit reset times

Displayed in the header bar; press u in the command palette to check.

Git integration

• Worktree support — list, create, and remove git worktrees; optionally select a branch when creating a session
• Diff viewer — F10 opens a modal showing the current working-tree diff with syntax coloring

Resource monitoring

• Per-session CPU % and memory (RSS) via psutil, displayed in the sidebar and header bar
• Configurable polling interval (default 5 s)

Global search

• Ctrl+F searches across all session output buffers
• Results shown with session name, line number, and matching text

Themes

8 built-in themes: dark, light, dracula, nord, monokai, gruvbox, solarized_dark, solarized_light. Cycle with Ctrl+T or the command palette. Custom CSS paths supported.

Configuration

~/.config/tame/config.toml — created with sensible defaults on first run. Deep-merge: user overrides are layered on top of defaults.

Status indicators

Symbol	State	Meaning
●	ACTIVE	Process is running and producing output
○	IDLE	No output for the configured idle threshold
◉	WAITING	Agent detected as waiting for user input
✗	ERROR	Error pattern matched or non-zero exit
✓	DONE	Completion pattern matched or clean exit
⏸	PAUSED	Process suspended via SIGSTOP

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• POSIX (Linux, macOS)
• uv (recommended) or pip
• tmux (recommended — enables session persistence and restore)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/AshirBorah/linux_agent_manager.git
cd linux_agent_manager
uv sync

Usage

uv run tame

Key bindings

Key	Action
F2	New session
F3 / F4	Prev / Next session
F6	Toggle sidebar
F7 / F8	Resume / Pause all
F9	Rename session
F10	Git diff viewer
F11	Set session group
Alt+1 ... Alt+9	Jump to session N
Ctrl+Space	Command palette
Ctrl+F	Global search
Ctrl+T	Cycle theme
Ctrl+L	Focus input
Shift+Tab	Focus search
Ctrl+C	Send SIGINT to PTY
Ctrl+D	Send EOF to PTY
Tab	Send tab to PTY
F12	Quit

All other keystrokes are forwarded to the active session's PTY. Key bindings are configurable via [keybindings] in config.

Command palette

Press Ctrl+Space then one of:

Key	Action
c	New session
d	Delete session
e	Export session log
g	Set session group
h	Input history picker
m	Rename session
n	Next session
p	Previous session
s	Toggle sidebar
f	Focus search
i	Focus input
t	Cycle theme
u	Check usage
r	Resume all
z	Pause all
x	Clear notifications
1-9	Jump to session N
q	Quit

Configuration

On first run, TAME creates ~/.config/tame/config.toml with defaults. Key sections:

[sessions]
default_working_directory = "~"
start_in_tmux = true                     # back each session with a tmux session
restore_tmux_sessions_on_startup = true  # auto-restore on launch
tmux_session_prefix = "tame"
idle_threshold_seconds = 300             # seconds before IDLE state

[patterns.prompt]
regexes = ['\\[y/n\\]', '\\[Y/n\\]', '\\[yes/no\\]']

[patterns.error]
regexes = ['(?i)error:', '(?i)fatal:', 'Traceback \\(most recent call last\\)']
shell_regexes = ['command not found', 'No such file or directory']

[patterns.profiles.claude]
prompt = ['(?i)approve|deny', '(?i)do you want to proceed']
error  = ['(?i)api error', '(?i)rate limit']

[notifications]
enabled = true
[notifications.dnd]
enabled = false
start = ""
end = ""
[notifications.desktop]
enabled = true
[notifications.audio]
enabled = true
[notifications.toast]
enabled = true
[notifications.slack]
enabled = false
webhook_url = ""
verbosity = 10                           # 0=off, 10=errors+input, 50=+completed, 100=all

[theme]
current = "dark"

[git]
worktrees_enabled = true

[keybindings]
new_session = "f2"
prev_session = "f3"
next_session = "f4"
toggle_sidebar = "f6"
quit = "f12"

See tame/config/defaults.py for the full default configuration.

Development

uv pip install pytest pytest-asyncio textual-dev   # install dev deps
uv run pytest                                       # run all tests
uv run pytest tests/ -x --tb=short -v               # verbose, stop on first failure
uv run pytest -k "pattern"                          # run specific tests

Project structure

tame/
├── __main__.py               # Entry point
├── app.py                    # TAMEApp (Textual App)
├── config/                   # ConfigManager, defaults, profiles
├── session/                  # SessionManager, PTY, OutputBuffer, PatternMatcher, state machine
├── ui/widgets/               # Sidebar, Viewer, HeaderBar, StatusBar, dialogs, overlays
├── ui/themes/                # ThemeManager + .tcss files
├── ui/keys/                  # KeybindManager
├── notifications/            # NotificationEngine, desktop, audio, toast, Slack, webhook
├── persistence/              # StateStore (SQLite)
├── git/                      # Git worktree helpers
└── utils/                    # Logging
tests/                        # pytest tests (221+)

Planned (v2)

• Docker container sessions
• Plugin system
• Web UI

License

MIT