Running multiple agents

Termio is built for running more than one agent at once. The sidebar is your control surface: every session is a row, and every row reports what its agent is doing right now. Any terminal will let you open several agents at once; what this buys you is not having to watch them.

Built-in agentsCopy Anchor Link

Termio recognizes the common coding agents out of the box:

Any of these that’s installed on your PATH appears as a launch option. A plain shell is always available too. Running something else? Any CLI can become a first-class agent — see Custom agents.

PATH means the machine’s own PATH: Termio looks for these on whichever machine the workspace is on, so a VPS offers what is installed there. Settings ▸ Agents says so in the row — Not installed on devbox — rather than hiding it behind a machine picker, and the machine’s own page under Remote hosts is where you fix it.

Termio launches each agent through your real login shell, so everything your shell profile sets up — version managers, PATH additions, credentials — is there exactly as it would be in iTerm. If an agent is installed but Termio says it isn’t found, that is almost always a PATH question; the Agents tab says so and takes an absolute path in the command field.

What each agent reportsCopy Anchor Link

Status isn’t guessed the same way for every agent, and the difference is worth knowing when a dot doesn’t move. Each agent declares its own channels in its manifest, except one: program status is the agent reporting its state over the terminal with the program status protocol (OSC 7501), and outranks every other signal while it speaks. Hooks are the agent reporting its own turns and are authoritative wherever program status is absent; title is an in-band signal read off the terminal title; progress is the OSC 9;4 progress sequence. An agent that declares none of these is read from the pane itself — from whether its output is still moving, not from matching words on the screen, which only happens for an agent whose manifest spells the patterns out.

Program status needs Claude Code 2.1.295, Codex 0.163.0, Pi 1.1.0, or omp 18.8.7 and later. Claude Code’s hook now only adds the tool it is running; Codex, Pi, and omp need no hook at all. An older version reports less: Claude Code’s and Codex’s dots follow their terminal titles, and Pi’s and omp’s follow their output.

“Resumes its conversation” means reopening the session puts the agent back in the same conversation rather than a blank one — see What survives. Agents without it come back as a fresh run in the same directory.

Hooks are installed for you, per machine, when Live agent status is on. An agent on a box you set up before turning that on has none, which is the usual reason a remote session’s dot never moves — see Status hooks & session control.

Reading status at a glanceCopy Anchor Link

Every session row carries a live status dot — working, idle, done, or needs you. The sidebar guide explains what each state means, and Concepts covers where the signal comes from.

The distinction that matters is done versus needs you. A finished turn is done — a calm cue that work landed while you were elsewhere. Needs you is reserved for an agent that genuinely cannot continue: a permission prompt, a question, a choice. Conflating the two is what turns a fleet into a pile of alarms, so Termio keeps “ready” quiet and saves the loud state for the one case where walking away costs you time.

Statuses roll up. A project’s row summarizes the sessions inside it, and the menu-bar tray summarizes everything — so you can be in another app entirely and still know the moment something needs you.

Skipping permission promptsCopy Anchor Link

Many agents ship a flag that stops them asking before each tool call. Where one exists, Termio wires it to a toggle rather than making you remember the spelling: turn it on for an agent in Settings ▸ Agents and Termio appends that agent’s own flag when it launches.

It is a standing decision about that agent, so unlike its command path it is not per machine — the flag goes on every launch of that agent, on every machine. Read the flag before you turn the switch on: these are the vendors’ own escape hatches and some of them give up more than the prompt. Codex’s is --dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox, which drops its sandbox along with the approvals. Termio appends what the vendor documents; it adds no sandbox of its own.

Switching without losing your placeCopy Anchor Link

Clicking a session brings it forward instantly; the others keep running in the background. Because each session is a real process hosted on its machine, an agent doesn’t pause when it’s off-screen — or when you switch workspaces, or close the window. Kick off a long run in one, switch to another, and come back when the first raises its hand.

When you have more than a handful of sessions, ⇧⌘O jumps straight to any of them by name — see Navigation.

Keeping two agents out of each other’s filesCopy Anchor Link

Two agents in one checkout will collide: same working tree, same index, same branch. The fix isn’t coordination, it’s separation — give each line of work its own git worktree and point an agent at each. Termio reads worktrees from git itself and nests them under the project, so this is a right-click rather than a setup step. See Git worktrees.

Letting agents drive each otherCopy Anchor Link

Once a fleet is normal, the next thing you want is for one agent to run the fleet. termio sessions is that API: an agent can list its siblings, spawn new ones on a prompt, answer a session that’s blocked, and block until a turn settles — all over a local socket, scoped to its own project.

termio sessions list
termio sessions spawn "update the changelog for 0.54" --agent codex
termio sessions watch

It’s opt-in, and turning it on also installs a small skill that teaches your agents the commands exist. See Command-line tool for the full verb reference and Session control for the switch.