Tmux Claude Status

tmux-claude-status

Every Claude Code session's state, live in your tmux tab bar — a spinner while it works, amber when it asks, red when it's blocked on an approval, green when it's done.

[](https://github.com/LiveNL/tmux-claude-status/actions/workflows/tests.yml)


Run five Claude sessions in five windows and you spend your day guessing which tab wants you. This makes the bar answer it at a glance:

State	Glyph	Color	When
running	⬢ (animates)	cyan	Claude is working
input	?	amber	Claude is waiting on your reply
permission	!	red	Claude needs approval to run a command
done	✓	green	Claude finished without a question
(idle)	—	dim	No active Claude session

**No polling. No cron. No daemons.** [Claude Code hooks](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/hooks) fire at each lifecycle event; the tab is repainted at that exact moment. Questions latch, finished turns hold their colour, and the transitions Claude never reports — Esc, a granted permission, a stop hook resuming the turn — are caught by watchers. Subagents can't repaint a tab that's waiting on you. The whole state machine is pinned by 260+ assertions run in CI, including a payload contract checked against captured real Claude payloads.

Curious why the tab never lies? Read [how it works](docs/how-it-works.md).

Install

git clone https://github.com/LiveNL/tmux-claude-status
cd tmux-claude-status
bash install.sh

The installer copies the hook scripts to `~/.claude/hooks/` and merges their wiring into `~/.claude/settings.json` (backs up first, preserves existing hooks).

Requires [tmux](https://github.com/tmux/tmux) ≥ 3.0, [jq](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/), and the [Claude Co