telepane

A mouse-driven tmux control dashboard for your terminal. The send box is the core function. Select a pane in the tree. Type a message. Telepane sends the message to that pane. You control an agent or a REPL in a different pane. You do not leave your current pane.

Telepane uses Textual. The mouse and the keyboard both work.

┌──────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ● main    2w │ tmux 3.7  pid 1690  4 sess 9 win     │
│  ▸ 0:edit 2p │ target %6  (pane: edit.1)            │
│   ◆ %0 nvim  │ cmd claude  pid 51231  size 120×40   │
│   ◇ %1 bash  │ ┌ preview ─────────────────────────┐ │
│ ○ work    1w │ │ > waiting for input…             │ │
│   ▸ 0:sh  1p │ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │
│              │ target: %6                           │
│              │ ┌ message ─────────────────────────┐ │
│              │ │ run the tests and report back    │ │
│              │ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │
│              │        [x] Enter  [Clear] [ Send ▶ ] │
└──────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

Install

pip install telepane            # or: pipx install telepane  /  uv tool install telepane

Telepane needs Python 3.9 or higher. Telepane needs a tmux server that runs.

On Python 3.10 or higher, markdown highlighting installs automatically. The tree-sitter dependency has no wheel for Python 3.9.

PNG screenshots need one more package. The cairosvg package needs the native cairo library. To install the extra, run this command:

pip install "telepane[png]"

Use

telepane          # launch the dashboard (run it in its own pane)
telepane -v       # version

• Click a session, window, or pane in the left tree to select the target.

• Type a message in the message box. Press Enter to send it. You can also click Send ▶ or press Ctrl+S.

• The ⏎ to send / ⏎ to newline switch changes the function of Enter:

  • ⏎ to send: Enter sends the message. Shift+Enter adds a new line.
  • ⏎ to newline: Enter adds a new line. Shift+Enter sends the message.

  Shift+Enter needs a terminal that reports extended keys.

• Drag the ┆ divider to resize the sidebar. Drag the ┄ divider to resize the pane viewer and the message box. The message box goes from one input line to the full height. At full height, the box hides the viewer. Telepane saves both sizes.

• Markdown highlighting in the message box is on by default. To disable it, open Settings with the , key. Python 3.10 or higher gets highlighting automatically.

Telepane always sends your text and an Enter key to the target pane. The Enter key submits the message in that pane.

Keys

Telepane saves settings to ~/.config/telepane/config.json.

Pair with your agent

You do not have to set any of this up yourself. Tell your coding agent:

Install telepane from pip and set me up for agent pairing.

The repo ships a Claude Code plugin with an agent-pairing skill. The skill teaches the agent the full workflow: terminal and tmux setup, worker agents in side panes (claude, codex, gemini, copilot, opencode, cursor-agent, and others), briefing, and teardown. You steer any of those agents mid-session with telepane: click the pane, type, press Enter.

claude plugin marketplace add imantsk/telepane
# then inside claude: /plugin install telepane

Why not just switch panes?

You can. But you sometimes control several agents across many panes. One control surface is faster in this case. It lists all the panes. It shows the state of each pane. You type to any pane and you keep your place.

Design notes

• Every tmux call is an argv list through subprocess. Telepane uses no shell.
• Telepane addresses panes by the stable tmux ids ($, @, %).
• Telepane delivers text with send-keys -l -- (literal).

License

MIT