Workmux: Git Worktrees + Agent Control, Inside tmux

🎯 The Anti-Terminal Pitch 0:00

The premise is a deliberate contrarian take. The internet is "flooded with projects all trying to tell you it's the new terminal for agents" — people shipping literal terminals, forking Ghostty, or building multiplexers from scratch. Some are great, "some are absolute junk." The host's actual wishlist is modest: tmux, plus a sprinkle of agent control. Oh, and worktrees — "especially worktrunk style" — and a way to know when things are ready. "Not all that difficult, is it?"

He'd covered projects doing either of these things, but never all of them at once — until a colleague pushed him to try Workmux. The verdict, stated early: "It delivered. I don't have to leave tmux." A dashboard, a small control plane, worktrees as first-class citizens, and full visibility into everything running — plus tmux session support so his beloved session manager (fuzzy-find, pick, review, move) keeps working.

🧬 What Workmux Is 1:29

"If tmux and Work Trunk had a love child" — that's Workmux. It sandboxes, delegates, and coordinates, but the core is what makes it unique: worktrees, agent visibility, and tmux, unified. It's written by Raine Virta, an assistant software engineer out of Finland — and, the host notes with a wink, likely "together with an enthusiastic AI agent, since he gave AI access to places I wouldn't imagine."

It's written in Rust — which the host, in a running joke, calls "the ugliest programming language that has been invented in probably the last 40 years… like pouring acid in my eyes." A matter of taste; the tool itself he clearly respects.

⚙️ Setup: init, config, skills 2:17

Install, give it a quick wm alias, and start working. On a new project, workmux init does three useful things: it checks you can render nerd fonts, detects installed agents so it can track their status, and installs the skills needed to merge, rebase, open PRs, and so on. Two config files land: a .workmux dotfile under the project (with an include file that lets gitignored files get copied into new worktrees), and a mostly-empty global config under your config path.

The boilerplate config is where the power hides: a special mode, window placements, pane configurations, and more. But the entry point to daily use is one command: workmux add.

🌿 Worktrees as First-Class Citizens 3:20

workmux add <name> does several things at once: it creates a worktree directory alongside your project (e.g. fatbot-worktrees/), renames the tmux window with a little branch icon, and opens a vertical split. The 30-second worktree primer, for context: worktrees are "the better, way better hidden git feature for branches" — forget stashing and popping changes; work on different changes simultaneously using different snapshots. The catch is that it's "a fantastic git feature with terrible UX."

The host's take: Workmux solves all of the worktree pain points "while giving you a lot more" than even a good wrapper like Work Trunk. The natural next move, with any new branch or worktree, is firing up an agent — and that's where Workmux's agent integration takes over.

🤖 Agent Integration & the Dashboard 6:46

Firing up an agent (the host uses Pi) in a new worktree brings the installed skills into play — opening PRs, merging, and the like, each a short instruction. Then workmux list gives you every branch/tree with age, path, merged status, and whether an agent is running in it.

The centerpiece is the dashboard (workmux dashboard), which lists running agents with time, title, worktree, and project — plus a live preview of the window where each agent is running. Two keys stand out:

• d → diff: a full-screen window with the changes.
• i → input: the preview stops being a preview — it becomes "an actual portal into the worktree." You can control the agent, speak to it, then hit escape to step back out.

🚀 Parallel Workflow & the Sidebar 8:38

For set-and-forget agents, the host describes a "frictionless AI launchpad": workmux add -p "prompt" -a pi sends the prompt straight from the firing command with the agent specified inline — no ceremony, fire and walk away. Config takes care of the annoying default split (removing it, or setting the main pane to launch Pi automatically).

The feature that answers a direct comparison to Herdr — whose sidebar "telling you what's going on while you work" was a big selling point — is workmux sidebar: a sidebar in a tmux pane showing everything that's running, right next to your workspace. You kill, resize, and arrange it with plain tmux motions, and configure position (top vs side) via config YAML or flags.

On safety, the host notes Workmux can run agents in YOLO mode (sandboxing is touched on), and that he's "happy to know it's there" — his daily driver, Pi, defaults to YOLO anyway, but that's a conscious choice rather than an accident.

🧭 Session Mode: The Killer Feature 11:01

The "biggest workflow feature" is session mode: workmux add --mode session opens the splits with Pi and creates a new tmux session — visible on top. Why that matters: Workmux sessions launched as worktrees appear immediately in your tmux session manager (sessionx or its rival sesh), so you fuzzy-find, preview, and jump straight in — no sidebar, no dashboard round-trip. "It's all right there."

You can start multiple, and each becomes available in any session manager both visually and physically. And the session stays a normal tmux session — keep configuring it, add panes or windows (say, a test tab running make).

🧹 Sweep Cleaner & Verdict 12:11

The dashboard has a hidden second tab (hit tab) listing current worktrees with git statuses, plus whether Workmux is responsible for each one. From there: R removes a tree (sometimes needing a force if it has changes), and shift+R runs a sweep cleaner that lists merged trees for you to deselect or keep — then deletes the rest in one go.

The closing verdict is measured and honest: there's plenty more to configure, but the core essentials are "the ability to control a modern-style workflow still using tmux and worktrees — exactly as Linus intended." One practical caveat the host offers: wrap your head around worktree fundamentals first, since everything Workmux does builds on that.

💡 Key Takeaways

1. Don't leave tmux. Workmux's pitch is agent control inside your existing multiplexer, not a replacement terminal.
2. Worktrees, fixed. Git worktrees are powerful but have terrible UX; Workmux makes them first-class with add/list/remove.
3. The dashboard is a control plane. Live agent preview, d for diff, and i for a portal that lets you talk to the agent directly.
4. Frictionless launchpad. workmux add -p "prompt" -a pi fires a set-and-forget agent in one command.
5. Session mode is the killer feature. Worktree + agent becomes a tmux session your sessionx/sesh manager picks up instantly.
6. Sidebar answers Herdr. A status sidebar in a tmux pane, controllable with plain tmux motions.
7. Cleanup is built in. shift+R sweep-cleans merged worktrees in one pass.
8. Know worktrees first. Everything Workmux does builds on git worktree fundamentals.

🔗 Resources & Links

• 🐙 github.com/raine/workmux — "git worktrees + tmux windows for zero-friction parallel dev" (Rust, MIT)

Source video: youtube.com/watch?v=7uumknh43rM — note: the description carries only sponsor/promo links beyond the Workmux repo.

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