muxel vs Zellij

Muxel is a desktop terminal workspace for keeping AI coding agents and shells together. Its panes can be split horizontally or vertically, grouped into tabs, or moved into separate windows. Configurable presets cover Claude, opencode, Amp, Grok, Hermes, Ollama, Ollama Code, Pi, and Shell. Git worktrees isolate projects and support review and GitHub pull request actions. Prompt-based task runners can launch jobs and schedule saved prompts every few minutes, hourly, or daily. The app includes an editor, file browser, diff review, Git controls, a command palette, and terminal scrollback search. Agent status indicates working, idle, blocked, or done, with desktop notifications when an unfocused agent needs attention. Muxel runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows; agents can run on remote hosts over SSH while the interface and file tools stay local. It is free and open source under GPL-3.0, with a separate commercial license available. The maker says Muxel does not send projects, terminal contents, prompts, or usage to them; configured providers have their own data policies. Windows does not support tmux session persistence.

Zellij is a terminal workspace for developers, operations-oriented users, and others who work in a terminal. It organizes work into tiled, floating, or stacked panes, which can be moved and resized with a mouse or keyboard. KDL layouts can define panes, tabs, commands, and plugins for repeatable workspace setups. Users can switch between named sessions and restore session structure and commands, including after reboots. A built-in web server enables browser access and remote session sharing over HTTPS; read-only tokens let observers view without interacting. The server is off by default, requires authentication, and its documentation recommends a reverse proxy on untrusted networks because it has no rate limiting. Plugins use WebAssembly and can be written in any language that compiles to WASM; Rust has an official SDK and scaffolding tools. Zellij works with existing terminal emulators, shells, and editors, but runs inside a terminal rather than replacing it. Zellij is free and open source at free, with no account required. Zellij.online is a paid hosted session-sharing service with a free tier and is described as being in closed beta.