Sessions & Activity

Unified mission control for your entire fleet of agents, workspaces, and projects—local and remote—in a single terminal view.

Overview

As your workflow scales to multiple repositories and background agents, keeping track of what is running becomes a challenge. Sidecar provides two dedicated global surfaces to monitor your fleet:

1. Sessions Browser (8): An aggregated list of every workspace, agent shell, and terminal session across all local repositories and connected Remote Hosts.
2. Activity Board (9 or K): A real-time cross-project Kanban board tracking agent lifecycle states across distinct operational lanes.

Both views sit in the global header tier alongside your project tabs and can be accessed at any time.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ [1 Workspaces] [2 Git] [3 Files] [4 Notes] ... | [8 Sessions] [9 Activity] │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┤
│ SESSIONS                                │ PREVIEW                          │
│                                         │                                  │
│ [PINNED]                                │ $ git status                     │
│   sidecar · main                        │ On branch main                   │
│   ● sidecar-sh-sidecar-1                │ Your branch is up to date.       │
│                                         │                                  │
│ ● LIVE SHELLS (3)                       │ $ sidecar layout apply --json    │
│   sidecar · fix-auth                    │ {                                │
│   ● claude (Working) · 12m ago          │   "applied": true,               │
│   backend · api-v2                      │   "panes": 3                     │
│   ● codex (Working) · 4m ago            │ }                                │
│   [remote] book · frontend              │                                  │
│   ● opencode (Working) · 18m ago        │                                  │
│                                         │                                  │
│ ◆ NEEDS ATTENTION (1)                   │                                  │
│   sidecar · refactor-tui                │                                  │
│   ◆ claude (Blocked on approval)        │                                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

Global Sessions Browser (8)

Press 8 from anywhere in Sidecar to open the Sessions browser.

Visual Card Hierarchy

Sessions presents your workspaces as organized cards with clean visual hierarchy:

• Status Section Headers: Headings group sessions into 📌 PINNED, ● LIVE SHELLS, ○ IDLE, ◆ NEEDS ATTENTION, and ● WORKING.
• Project Color Accent: Each project's section header and glyph inherit that project's stable theme hue, making it easy to distinguish projects at a glance.
• Remote Host Indicators: Sessions running on remote hosts display a ⇅ provenance glyph with a host-derived accent color.

Live Preview & Instant Attach

• Zero-Latency Snapshot Previews: When browsing rows, the right preview pane displays the most recent terminal screen snapshot without establishing extra connections or waking idle sessions.
• Interactive Attach (enter): Press enter on any row to immediately connect to its live tmux session in control mode. You can type commands, run tests, or interact with the running agent directly.
• Composed Multi-Pane Views: Just like project workspaces, you can compose adjacent Document, Diff, Issue, and Resource panes beside any session.

Persistent Global State

When you close or restart Sidecar, the Sessions browser restores exactly where you left off:

• The selected workspace row is remembered in global state.json.
• All composed pane layouts and split configurations beside the session are restored.
• Active leaf focus is preserved.

Cross-Project Activity Board (9 / K)

Press 9 (or press K / click the Sidecar logo) to open the Activity board.

The Activity board organizes all active agent-backed shells across all projects into real-time operational lanes:

Lane	Description	Indicator
Working	Agents actively generating code, running tests, or inspecting files	Green glyph (●)
Blocked / Needs Attention	Agents paused and waiting for human approval or input	Yellow glyph (◆)
Done	Agents that have successfully completed their designated task	Blue glyph (✓)
Idle	Shells where an agent process is alive but waiting for a new prompt	Neutral glyph (○)
Paused	Paused or backgrounded workspace sessions	Muted glyph (◌)

Activity Board Navigation

Key	Action
h, l, ←, →	Move between lanes
j, k, ↓, ↑	Move up and down within a lane
enter	Jump directly to the selected workspace and open its shell
r	Refresh the board
esc, q, K	Close the Activity overlay and return to your previous view

Managing Fleet Workspaces from Sessions

You can perform full workspace lifecycle actions directly on any row in the Sessions browser:

Key	Action	Description
n	Create Worktree	Opens the unified Worktree creation modal to branch new work in the selected project
ctrl+n	Create Shell	Instantly creates a new managed shell in the selected project
R	Rename	Renames the session's display name
D	Delete	Closes the tmux session and moves the shell record to a recoverable tombstone
O	Open in Git	Opens the selected worktree in the Git Status plugin
M	Reposition Pane	Opens the visual layout reposition modal to move composed preview panes
B	Broadcast	Sends one message to every live agent Sidecar can see, as a checklist you edit before sending (agent_control)

Actions on remote rows execute transparently on the remote host via secure SSH commands. See Remote Hosts for full details on remote fleet management.