[Feature] tmux status-bar popup: mission ID + checkout directory for a window

[swade1987]

(This post authored by my AgenC)

Problem

Running many missions in parallel across tmux (windows spread across agenc, agenc-pool, and personal sessions), there's no fast way to answer "what mission/repo is this tab actually running, and where's its checkout" without either reading the window title closely or going through agenc mission attach (Ctrl+M) to browse the full list. Sometimes you just want the answer for the one tab you're looking at, right now.

Proposal

A small popup — triggered by a keybinding (or a mouse click on the window tab) — that shows, for a single window:

• Window index/name
• Checkout directory (pane_current_path)
• AgenC mission UUID for that pane, resolved via agenc tmux resolve-mission

Below is a working reference implementation (tested this session, including window names containing spaces and emoji) that could plug into agenc tmux inject's generated ~/.agenc/tmux-keybindings.conf — it already leans on agenc tmux resolve-mission, so this would just be a thin UI layer on a primitive AgenC already exposes.

.tmux.conf bindings

# Middle-click a window tab in the status bar: popup showing its checkout
# directory and AgenC mission ID (if any). MouseDown2Status is unbound by
# tmux default, so no fallback for existing behaviour is needed.
#
# display-popup's own shell-command argument and -e flag do NOT format-
# expand tmux's #{...} placeholders (confirmed empirically — only
# run-shell's shell-command argument does), so run-shell -t = resolves the
# clicked window's values into plain text FIRST, then hands them as
# positional args to mission-info-launch.sh, which only THEN opens the
# actual popup.
bind-key -T root MouseDown2Status if-shell -F '#{==:#{mouse_status_range},window}' \
  "run-shell -t = '~/.agenc/scripts/mission-info-launch.sh \"#{window_index}:#{window_name}\" \"#{pane_current_path}\" \"#{pane_id}\"'"

# Same popup, keyboard-triggered for the CURRENT window — middle-click
# mapping varies by trackpad/mouse, this doesn't.
bind ';' run-shell "~/.agenc/scripts/mission-info-launch.sh \"#{window_index}:#{window_name}\" \"#{pane_current_path}\" \"#{pane_id}\""

mission-info-launch.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Thin wrapper: the .tmux.conf binding uses run-shell to resolve tmux's
# #{...} formats into plain strings (only run-shell's shell-command
# argument format-expands — display-popup's does not) and passes the
# results here as positional args. This script then launches the actual
# popup with those already-resolved, plain-string values.
tmux display-popup -E -w 70 -h 10 \
  ~/.agenc/scripts/mission-info-popup.sh \
  "$1" "$2" "$3"

mission-info-popup.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Shown via middle-click on a window tab, or prefix+; for the current
# window: which window, its checkout directory, and its AgenC mission ID
# if it has one. Takes positional args, not env vars — see launch script.

window_label="${1:-unknown}"
cwd="${2:-unknown}"
pane_id="$3"

echo "Window:     $window_label"
echo "Directory:  $cwd"

mission_uuid=""
if [ -n "$pane_id" ]; then
  mission_uuid=$(agenc tmux resolve-mission "$pane_id" 2>/dev/null)
fi

if [ -n "$mission_uuid" ]; then
  echo "Mission ID: $mission_uuid"
else
  echo "Mission ID: (not an AgenC mission)"
fi

echo
echo "Press any key to close..."
read -n 1 -s -r

Note on agenc tmux resolve-mission

While building this, I found agenc tmux resolve-mission <pane-id> returns a mission UUID even when given a garbage/unexpanded argument (e.g. the literal string #{pane_id} rather than a real pane ID like %129) — it appears to silently fall back to ambient context rather than validating its input. That's what led me to catch the display-popup expansion bug above (a "correct-looking but coincidental" result masked a real bug for a while). Happy to file that separately as its own issue if useful — didn't want to conflate a bug report with this feature request.

Why this seems broadly useful

Anyone running more than a couple of parallel missions in tmux hits the same "which tab is this" friction. Since AgenC already tracks the pane→mission mapping (resolve-mission exists for exactly this), shipping a lightweight "peek" popup alongside the existing agenc tmux inject keybindings seems like a natural, low-cost addition rather than something every user has to hand-roll.

[mieubrisse]

Hey @swade1987 ! There are a few features already in AgenC that might be useful to you for this:

EMOJIS:
You can set an emoji per-repo in the AgenC config, that will get prefixed to the start of the tab name so you can get peripheral vision on which repo each mission is in. For example, 🚀 is my AgenC repo emoji:

This will also show up along with the repo name in the Attach Mission picker via ctrl-M:

COPY MISSION UUID:
There's a Copy Mission UUID palette command, which by default is bound to ctrl-,, and a short version of this also shows up in the Mission Picker

RENAMING:
You can rename missions with ctrl-. or the corresponding command palette entry

---

do any of these help to do what you're trying to do?