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What is tmux-workbench?

leon-nie-code/tmux-workbench — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

20RustAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · easy

In one sentence

A CLI and TUI that remembers context across your local and remote tmux sessions, including git state and AI coding agent files, so you can quickly resume any workspace.

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Quickly find and reattach to a tmux session on any of several remote servers.

USE CASE 2

Keep notes, tags, and aliases on each workspace so you remember what it was for.

USE CASE 3

Check the git branch and dirty status of every active project session at a glance.

USE CASE 4

Recreate a missing tmux session's layout and panes from its last saved snapshot.

What is it built with?

RusttmuxSSHSQLite

How does it compare?

leon-nie-code/tmux-workbenchakitaonrails/ratatui-bubbleteadeepdiy/pdf2md
Stars202020
LanguageRustRustRust
Setup difficultyeasyeasyeasy
Complexity2/52/52/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Requires tmux, git, and ssh already installed on your system.

MIT license: use, modify, and share freely, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

So what is it?

Tmux Workbench is a command-line tool that helps developers keep track of their work when they are juggling many terminal sessions across multiple machines. It builds on top of tmux, a common tool for keeping terminal sessions running in the background, and ssh, the standard way to connect to remote servers. On its own, tmux does not remember much context once you disconnect: this tool adds a memory layer on top so you can quickly find, inspect, and jump back into any session. It works by scanning your local and remote tmux sessions and recording useful details about each one: which server it is on, what project folder and command it is running, the git branch, commit, and whether there are uncommitted changes, plus any AI coding agent instruction files like CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md found in that folder. All of this is stored locally in a small database, and you can add your own notes, nicknames, and tags to each session as well. The tool pays particular attention to sessions running AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or Aider, treating those as important workspace context and showing their instruction files directly in its interface. You interact with it through a single command called ws, either using specific subcommands from the terminal or a full-screen browsable interface with search and filtering. A recreate command can even rebuild a missing tmux session from its last known snapshot, prefilling commands in the right panes without automatically running them. Installation is done with a one-line install script, through Rust's Cargo package manager, via Homebrew, or by downloading a prebuilt binary directly. Session and configuration data live in a local SQLite database and a YAML config file. The project is built in Rust and is still pre-1.0, meaning its command layout and stored data format may still change before a stable release. It is licensed under MIT.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me install tmux-workbench and index my existing local and remote tmux sessions.
Prompt 2
Show me how to add a remote server and scan its tmux sessions with the ws command.
Prompt 3
Explain how ws recreate rebuilds a missing tmux session.
Prompt 4
Help me search my workspaces by git dirty status and server name in the ws TUI.

Frequently asked questions

What is tmux-workbench?

A CLI and TUI that remembers context across your local and remote tmux sessions, including git state and AI coding agent files, so you can quickly resume any workspace.

What language is tmux-workbench written in?

Mainly Rust. The stack also includes Rust, tmux, SSH.

What license does tmux-workbench use?

MIT license: use, modify, and share freely, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

How hard is tmux-workbench to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is tmux-workbench for?

Mainly developer.

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