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Terminal integrations

How stage finds the agent in the pane beside it.

stage can hand a review to an agent that runs beside it. To do that, stage has to know which terminal it is inside, and which panes hold agents.

Terminal Needs
herdr Version 0.7.0 or later
cmux Any version

Both know which of their panes run an agent. stage asks them for that list. It does not look at processes itself.

They are alternatives, not layers. herdr runs inside a terminal emulator such as Ghostty. cmux is a terminal of its own.

For herdr, the floor is 0.7.0 because a send is aimed at a tab and a workspace, and earlier versions have neither.

At startup stage reads its own environment. herdr and cmux each give a pane its own variables, so the answer costs nothing and stage has it before the first frame.

Normally only one of them answers. If both do, one runs inside the other, and stage picks herdr as the inner one. The inner pane holds your agent. The outer surface holds the whole session, so a review sent there lands in the screen you are looking at.

With no host, s does not appear in the review list at all. stage does not offer a key that cannot work.

The multiplexer decides. A pane it knows as an agent is offered. A plain shell is not.

When one agent is running, s sends to it. When several are, stage shows a list, and each row names the agent and where it runs.

Before it sends, stage asks the multiplexer whether that pane still holds an agent. A pane can lose its agent while the list is open. A review that lands in a shell is a review that is gone.

Method Effect
STAGE_NO_HOST=1 Detects neither herdr nor cmux
STAGE_NO_HERDR=1 Ignores herdr
STAGE_NO_CMUX=1 Ignores cmux

To read what stage detected, press ; and open the About section. The section separates the two cases: a terminal that stage cannot use, and a terminal that you turned off.

The hand-off is one key on one page. Everything else about reviewing works with no multiplexer, and y copies the review as text for an agent that runs somewhere else. Read Review comments.