Docs · Status

Six states, from the agent.

Every session's tmux pane is polled, every two seconds by default (poll_interval), and each poll resolves to one of six states.

Pane rules

Detection matches per-tool regex rules against the visible pane, reads the newest turn to tell finished from waiting, and treats output that changes between polls as working. A turn that ends without any summary line still resolves: a working pane that goes quiet counts as finished, or waiting when it ended on a question.

Work that outlives the turn which started it, such as a background agent, is matched by busy_line, so a turn-end summary keeps reading as working while that work runs. Polling continues while you are inside a session, so the statuses stay live.

Claude Code hooks

For Claude Code the status is first-hand rather than inferred. Sessions launch with a generated --settings file whose hooks write the lifecycle state (working, waiting, finished, idle) to a per-session status file, and the poller reads that first.

Pane rules still refine it, because hooks cannot see a plain-text question, an Esc interrupt or an error line, so a matching pane verdict upgrades the hook status. They take over entirely when the hook file is missing or stale. Enabled per tool with status_source = "claude-hooks".

Reading the list

Each row carries its status and tool inline, and a folded group keeps a count per status, so a collapsed subtree still tells you whether anything under it needs you. Selecting a session shows the tail of its pane on the right, which is how a waiting agent's actual question reaches you without attaching. A session with no window left, archived or killed, shows the snapshot taken while it still had one.