OpenVibe vs tmux: running ten agents without losing track

When you run several coding agents at once, the first idea is often tmux: one session, a few panes, one agent per pane. It works, and for plenty of people it is enough. But tmux was built for terminals, not for agents that work for a while, stop to ask a question, then carry on.

This article compares the two without looking for a winner. tmux and OpenVibe do different jobs, and there are cases where tmux is still the better choice.

What tmux does well

tmux does one thing and does it well: it keeps your terminal sessions alive. Its server runs independently of your connection, so you can log off, come back the next day with tmux attach, and find everything as you left it, processes included. It splits a window into panes, is driven entirely from the keyboard and is easy to script.

It can even send the same keystrokes to every pane of a window, with the synchronize-panes option:

# one session, several panes, one keystroke for all
tmux new -s agents
tmux split-window -h
tmux split-window -v
tmux setw synchronize-panes on

To target a single pane from a script, send-keys -t does the job, and capture-pane lets you read what a pane shows. tmux runs on Linux, macOS and the BSDs; on Windows, it goes through WSL. It is a long-established, lightweight tool that asks for nothing more than a terminal.

When you get to ten agents

A coding agent is not just another terminal. It works, then stops to ask a question (“should I delete the old component?”), then carries on. In tmux, those moments are scrolling text: to find out who is waiting, you have to go from pane to pane and read. With three agents, that is fine. With ten, you end up missing the one question that has been holding everything up.

OpenVibe starts from there. Each terminal is an agent whose state it tracks, on the canvas and in the Agents panel: WORKING, WAITING, READY. For Claude Code, the state comes from its hooks and is precise: OpenVibe knows when the session is waiting for your answer. For other agents, it comes from their output, which is coarser: text coming in means the agent is working; silence means it is ready.

When an agent waits, a notice stays at the bottom left of the window for as long as it waits, and a Windows notification goes out if the window is not in focus. One click takes you to the agent, and a palette command jumps to the next one that waits.

The rest follows the same idea. You group agents with a role (Frontend, Backend, Testers…), and you write to @all, to a group or to @athena/hermes from a single instruction box. And because agents write code, you need to be able to review it: the change review shows what an agent modified, you click a line to leave a remark, and all your remarks go back to the agent in one message.

Side by side

	tmux	OpenVibe
Platforms	Linux, macOS, BSD; Windows through WSL	Windows 10/11 (early preview)
Layout	Windows and panes in a grid	Infinite canvas (Excalidraw): zoom, drawing, annotations
Agent state	No, text to read	WORKING, WAITING, READY; precise for Claude Code, read from output for the others
Writing to many	synchronize-panes on a window, send-keys -t from a script	@all, a group, @athena/hermes, / commands
Teams	No	Groups, roles, specialities, presets
Code review	No	Diff per agent, remarks per line
Orchestration	Script it yourself	Orchestrator, one branch and worktree per agent, mission branch
Remote session	Yes, detachable over SSH	No, a local desktop app
After closing	Processes keep running	Agents stop; canvas and history are kept
Interface	Keyboard (Ctrl+b prefix), mouse optional	Keyboard and mouse, palettes, radial menu
Licence	ISC	MIT

The “After closing” row matters more than it looks. Detaching from tmux leaves your programs running. Closing OpenVibe stops the agents: it saves the canvas and the terminals’ history first, and on the next start it offers to resume your Claude conversations, but an agent that was in the middle of something has stopped.

When to keep tmux

• Your agents run on a remote server that you reach over SSH.
• You work on macOS or Linux: OpenVibe is only available for Windows 10/11 today.
• You want agents to outlive your window or a dropped connection: that is exactly what detaching in tmux does, and OpenVibe does not.
• You run one or two agents, and reading their output is enough.
• Your whole workflow is already scripted around tmux.
• You want a tool with a long track record: OpenVibe is an early preview.

In all of these cases, OpenVibe would add little, or take away something you need.

Using both

An OpenVibe terminal can be a plain shell: PowerShell, cmd, pwsh or Git Bash. Nothing stops you from running ssh in it, if it is available on your machine, then reattaching a remote session to see it on the canvas next to your local agents:

ssh my-server
tmux attach -t agents

OpenVibe then sees only a shell: its state comes from the output, and the remote agents’ states are yours to read, as in tmux. What you keep is the canvas around it: you can annotate, sketch the architecture next to it, and put that terminal in a group so the instruction box can reach it.

This combination also settles the closing question: if you close OpenVibe, only the ssh client stops. The tmux session keeps running on the server, with the agents inside it.

From tmux to OpenVibe

If tmux is in your fingers, here is what maps to what.

In tmux	In OpenVibe
tmux new -s project	Add a project: a folder, with its workspaces in tabs
split-window	Right-press the canvas, Launch 4 agents
synchronize-panes on	@all in the instruction box
Prefix + w	Ctrl+P: go to a terminal, a group, a project
Prefix + o	Ctrl+Tab: next terminal, in reading order
Prefix + d, then attach	No equivalent: closing OpenVibe stops the agents. The history is kept, and on the next start OpenVibe offers to resume your Claude conversations

The simplest way to make up your mind: keep tmux for remote work, and try OpenVibe the day you have more local agents than you can watch at a glance.

OpenVibe is an independent project with no ties to tmux. tmux is free software maintained by its contributors.