Sesh, the smart terminal session manager

BETA: This project is in active development. Please check out the issues and contribute if you're interested in helping out.

How to install

Homebrew

To install sesh, run the following homebrew command:

brew install joshmedeski/sesh/sesh

Go

Alternatively, you can install Sesh using Go's go install command:

go install github.com/joshmedeski/sesh@latest

This will download and install the latest version of Sesh. Make sure that your Go environment is properly set up.

Note: Do you want this on another package manager? Create an issue and let me know!

How to use

sesh list will list all your sessions, and sesh connect {session} will connect to a session (automatically creating it if it doesn't exist yet). It is best used by integrating it into your sehll and tmux.

fzf

The easiest way to integrate sesh into your workflow is to use fzf. You can use it to select a session to connect to:

sesh connect $(sesh list | fzf)

tmux + fzf

In order to integrate with tmux, you can add a binding to your tmux config (tmux.conf). For example, the following will bind ctrl-a T to open a fzf prompt as a tmux popup (using fzf-tmux) and using different commands to list sessions (sesh list -t), zoxide directories (sesh list -z), and find directories (fd...).

 bind-key "T" run-shell "sesh connect $(
	sesh list -tz | fzf-tmux -p 55%,60% \
		--no-sort --border-label ' sesh ' --prompt '⚡  ' \
		--header '  ^a all ^t tmux ^x zoxide ^f find' \
		--bind 'tab:down,btab:up' \
		--bind 'ctrl-a:change-prompt(⚡  )+reload(sesh list)' \
		--bind 'ctrl-t:change-prompt(🪟  )+reload(sesh list -t)' \
		--bind 'ctrl-x:change-prompt(📁  )+reload(sesh list -z)' \
		--bind 'ctrl-f:change-prompt(🔎  )+reload(fd -H -d 2 -t d -E .Trash . ~)'
)"

You can customize this however you want, see man fzf for more info on the different options.

See my video, Top 4 Fuzzy CLIs for more inspiration for tooling that can be integrated with sesh.

Recommended tmux Settings

I recommend you add these settings to your tmux.conf to have a better experience with this plugin.

bind-key x kill-pane # skip "kill-pane 1? (y/n)" prompt
set -g detach-on-destroy off  # don't exit from tmux when closing a session

Configuration

You can configure sesh by creating a sesh.toml file in your $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/sesh or $HOME/.config/sesh directory.

mkdir -p ~/.config/sesh
touch sesh.toml

Startup Scripts

A startup script is a script that is run when a session is created. It is useful for setting up your environment for a given project. For example, you may want to run npm run dev to automatically start a dev server.

Note: If you use the --command/-c flag, then the startup script will not be run.

The default startup will run on every project that doesn't have a specific startup script. You can configure the default startup script by setting the default_startup_script property in your sesh.toml file.

default_startup_script = "~/.config/sesh/scripts/default"

I like to use a script that opens nvim on session startup:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
tmux send-keys "nvim" Enter

The set a specific startup script for a project, you can add a startup_script property to your sesh.toml file.

[[startup_scripts]]
session_path = "~/code/sesh"
script_path = "~/.config/sesh/scripts/go"

[[startup_scripts]]
session_path = "~/code/joshmedeski.com"
script_path = "~/.config/sesh/scripts/node_dev"

The script can execute tmux commands to create panes, additional windows and trigger commands. Here is an example of a script (node_dev) that creates a pane for a dev server and opens a new pane with nvim:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
tmux split-window -v -p 30 "npm run dev"
tmux select-pane -t :.+
tmux send-keys "nvim" Enter

Set the file as an executable and it will be run when you connect to the specified session.

Background (the "t" script)

Sesh is the successor to my popular t-smart-tmux-session-manager tmux plugin. After a year of development and over 250 stars, it's clear that people enjoy the idea of a smart session manager. However, I've always felt that the tmux plugin was a bit of a hack. It's a bash script that runs in the background and parses the output of tmux commands. It works, but it's not ideal and isn't flexible enough to support other terminal multiplexers.

I've decided to start over and build a session manager from the ground up. This time, I'm using a language that's more suited for the task: Go. Go is a compiled language that's fast, statically typed, and has a great standard library. It's perfect for a project like this. I've also decided to make this session manager multiplexer agnostic. It will be able to work with any terminal multiplexer, including tmux, zellij, Wezterm, and more.

The first step is to build a CLI that can interact with tmux and be a drop-in replacement for my previous tmux plugin. Once that's complete, I'll extend it to support other terminal multiplexers.

Contributors

Made with contrib.rocks.