Agent Skills: Terminal Multiplexer Workflows

Terminal Multiplexer Workflows

Use this skill when the user asks how to operate or configure terminal multiplexers, especially Zellij pane/tab/floating-pane workflows.

Core approach

1. Ground behavioral claims in installed help or upstream docs. Multiplexer terminology and behavior changes across versions; do not rely on memory when the question is about exact actions/keybindings.
2. Check the installed version and action surface when possible. For Zellij, useful probes are:
   • zellij --version
   • zellij action --help
   • zellij setup --dump-config
   • zellij action <subcommand> --help
3. Distinguish UI keybindings, config action names, and CLI subcommands. Zellij config actions are CamelCase (eg. TogglePanePinned) while CLI subcommands are kebab-case when exposed (eg. toggle-pane-pinned). Some config/plugin actions are not exposed as direct CLI subcommands.
4. Use precise Zellij terminology. A Zellij “window” in user language usually means a pane. Floating is a pane property; tabs are not themselves floating panes.
5. When corrected by the user, re-check docs/source and explicitly repair the model. Avoid doubling down on plausible-but-wrong analogies from tmux or from action names.

Zellij pane/tab/floating-pane notes

• Ctrl-p e / TogglePaneEmbedOrFloating toggles the focused pane between tiled and floating.
• Ctrl-p w / ToggleFloatingPanes toggles visibility of floating panes in the current tab; if none exist, it can create one.
• Ctrl-p i / TogglePanePinned pins a floating pane, but pinning is not cross-tab follow behavior. In Zellij docs, pinning means the floating pane stays on top and/or remains visible when floating-pane visibility is toggled. Do not tell the user that a pinned pane follows them across tabs.
• Zellij does not expose ordinary “floating tabs”; floating applies to panes.
• BreakPane, BreakPaneLeft, and BreakPaneRight are keybinding/config actions for breaking a pane out of its tab; they may not appear as CLI zellij action subcommands in every installed version.

Moving floating panes between tabs in Zellij

For current Zellij versions with multiple-pane selection:

1. Focus the pane to move. It can be floating or tiled.
2. Toggle it into the pane group with the default keybinding:
   • Alt-p → TogglePaneInGroup
3. The multiple-select helper appears. Use:
   • r to break/move selected pane(s) to the tab on the right; if there is no right tab, it creates a new tab.
   • l to break/move selected pane(s) to the tab on the left; if there is no left tab, it creates a new tab.
   • b to break selected pane(s) into a new tab.
   • f to float selected pane(s).
   • e to embed selected floating pane(s).
   • s to stack selected pane(s).
   • c to close selected pane(s).
   • Esc to cancel.
4. If the target tab is not adjacent, either move/reorder tabs until it is adjacent or move the pane stepwise. Default tab movement: Alt-i moves the current tab left, Alt-o moves it right.

Multiple-selection helper details:

• Alt-p toggles the focused pane in/out of the group.
• Alt-Shift-p toggles follow-focus marking, adding focused panes to the group as focus moves.
• Default config bindings live under shared_except "normal" "locked":

  bind "Alt p" { TogglePaneInGroup; }
  bind "Alt Shift p" { ToggleGroupMarking; }
  

• These group-selection actions may not be present as direct zellij action CLI subcommands even though they exist as config actions.

Verification/pitfalls

• If Alt-p appears to do nothing, check whether Zellij is locked (Ctrl-g toggles lock mode) and whether custom keybindings removed TogglePaneInGroup.
• Avoid assuming a feature is a setting. Search the docs for exact terms (pinned, TogglePanePinned, move_to_focused_tab, break_panes_to_tab_with_index) and compare with installed zellij action --help.
• move_to_focused_tab true applies to LaunchOrFocusPlugin plugin panes, not arbitrary terminal panes.
• Zellij has plugin API functions such as break_panes_to_tab_with_index / break_panes_to_tab_with_id that can move panes to existing tabs, but they are plugin APIs, not necessarily end-user CLI subcommands.

References

• references/zellij-pane-tab-management.md contains condensed docs/source excerpts from the session that established the pinning and multiple-select behavior.