What is cctabs?
cctabs is a session manager for AI coding tools — primarily Claude Code. It lets you open, resume, fork, inspect, and close terminal sessions from a single CLI, without tmux.
The problem
Running multiple Claude Code sessions in parallel is powerful, but the tooling around it is rough:
- tmux-based tools (claude-squad, agent-deck, ccmanager) wrap everything in panes. Scrolling is awkward. Copy-paste breaks. You're fighting tmux instead of using your terminal.
- Manual tab management works but has no memory — you lose track of which tab is which session, which directory it's in, and whether it's still active.
- Claude Code's own session names (
--name) already sync to terminal tab titles, but nothing automates this.
The approach
cctabs takes a different view: your terminal tabs are already the multiplexer. A tab per session is the right UI. cctabs just gives you a CLI to drive it:
bash
cctabs sessions # what's running right now
cctabs new api ~/Dev/api
cctabs fork horizon # branch this conversation
cctabs send abc123 "yes\n"What makes it different
| cctabs | claude-squad | ccmanager | agent-deck | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No tmux required | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Terminal tabs as UI | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Fork sessions | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Tab title sync | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Claude Code skill | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
Terminal support
Wave Terminal is supported today. Support for iTerm2, Ghostty, and Warp is planned — the adapter architecture is in place.