agents-tree

agents-tree is a live terminal CLI and optional herdr plugin for viewing coding-agent sessions and their nested subagents as a tree. It shows Antigravity CLI (agy), Claude Code, Codex and Grok Build with each agent's model and effort, context use, elapsed time and status.

In a terminal, agents-tree .:

As a live overlay in herdr, one key away (prefix+a):

It reads the transcripts Antigravity CLI (agy), Claude Code, Codex and Grok Build keep on disk and never talks to a session, so nothing it prints ends up in an agent's context. It has no dependencies beyond Python 3.10.

Antigravity CLI (agy), Claude Code, Codex and Grok Build are supported.

Install

uv tool install agents-tree      # or: pipx install agents-tree

From a checkout: uv tool install ., or run it in place with PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m agents_tree.

Optional: herdr plugin

Install the plugin to open the live tree over the focused agent pane with one key:

herdr integration install claude                 # herdr learns each pane's session id
herdr plugin install blavka/agents-tree
herdr plugin action invoke agents-tree.setup-keys

Use

agents-tree                 # every running session on this machine
agents-tree .               # sessions running in this directory (or its newest session)
agents-tree ~/src/api       # same, for another directory
agents-tree 1a2b3c4d        # one session, by id or a unique prefix (an ambiguous one lists the matches)
agents-tree -r              # only running subagents and their parents
agents-tree -w              # live view like top, refreshed every 2 s (-n 5 for 5 s)
agents-tree --json .        # one schema-versioned JSON document for scripts
agents-tree --provider agy   # Antigravity CLI sessions
agents-tree --provider codex # Codex sessions under ~/.codex (or $CODEX_HOME)
agents-tree --provider grok # Grok Build sessions under ~/.grok (or $GROK_HOME)

--json writes the provider-neutral session and agent tree, including each agent's detail, to stdout. It is intended for scripts and other tools; errors go to stderr and it cannot be combined with --watch.

In the live view:

The live view takes the mouse for clicks and the wheel; most terminals still select text with Shift held, or start it with --no-mouse. When the tree is taller than the terminal, the oldest finished agents are folded into a "… N older finished agents hidden" line.

Enter on a row opens that agent's detail:

Caveats

• Context window. Claude Code does not record it, so it is taken from the model family: 1M for Claude 5 models (Opus, Sonnet, Fable), 200k otherwise. Grok Build stores it in summary.json when set; otherwise 2M for grok-4 / grok-code, 128k for other models. Override with --window 200000 or AGENTS_TREE_WINDOW.
• Transcript formats are internal to each agent CLI and may change between releases. Unknown lines are skipped, but a field that moves makes its column show - until agents-tree is updated.
• Elapsed spans wall-clock time, so a session resumed over several days, or a subagent woken up again by a message, shows that whole span.
• Running sessions (Claude) come from claude agents --json; without claude on PATH, agents-tree falls back to ~/.claude/sessions/ (interactive sessions only).
• Running sessions (Grok) are the ones in ~/.grok/active_sessions.json (or $GROK_HOME) whose process is still alive, including a session that is only waiting. A session also counts while its updates.jsonl was written in the last two minutes, or while a subagent's meta.json still says running.
• Running sessions (Codex) are inferred from a transcript written in the last two minutes, including one of its subagent transcripts. Codex's on-disk files do not retain the process id for a quiet, waiting session, so such a session may drop out of the all-sessions view until it writes again; a directory or session-id target still shows its newest saved session.
• Running sessions (Antigravity CLI / agy) are inferred from transcripts written in the last two minutes under ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/brain/ (or $ANTIGRAVITY_HOME). The older ~/.gemini/antigravity/ layout remains supported.

herdr plugin

herdr shows your agents, not their subagents. The plugin in this repository opens the live tree for the focused agent pane over that pane; closing it gives the layout back.

On a pane without an agent, prefix+a shows every running session. The plugin runs the copy of agents-tree bundled in the repository, so it needs only python3 3.10+ (or AGENTS_TREE_PYTHON pointing at one). setup-keys writes one marked block into your herdr config.toml (backed up first) and leaves keys you already use alone; agents-tree.remove-keys takes it out again. The open-split and open-tab actions show the same tree in a split or a tab.

For development, link a checkout instead: herdr plugin link /path/to/agents-tree.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest
uv run pylint src
uv run pylint tests --disable=redefined-outer-name,protected-access,unused-argument
uv run pyright

CI (.github/workflows/test.yaml) runs the same on every push and pull request: lint and types on Python 3.12, then the tests, a test run and a package build on 3.10 to 3.14.

To release, bump version in pyproject.toml, src/agents_tree/__init__.py and herdr-plugin.toml, then push a matching tag (git tag v0.2.0 && git push origin v0.2.0). .github/workflows/publish.yaml checks the tag against the version, tests, builds and publishes to PyPI through trusted publishing.

AGENTS.md is the guide for working on the code, including adding a provider; docs/demo/ shows how to check agents-tree against a real agent run in a throwaway project.

Providers live in src/agents_tree/providers/: each turns one agent CLI's files into the provider-neutral Session/Agent model in model.py, which render.py draws.

License

MIT