openmux vs Quil

openmux is a terminal multiplexer for Linux and macOS, with vertical, horizontal, and stacked pane layouts and nine workspaces. Each workspace can keep its own pane arrangement. Vim-style hjkl navigation and a Ctrl+b prefix provide two ways to control panes. Sessions preserve workspace layouts and pane working directories; users can detach while a background shim keeps running, then reattach from another client. The project also offers an aggregate PTY browser for filtering and previewing terminals by process, directory, or Git branch. Terminal features include mouse tracking, scrollback, pane zoom, and Kitty graphics support for image rendering, pixel sizing, and SSH-aware offloading. Its CLI handles session and pane operations such as creating sessions, splitting panes, sending text, capturing output, and listing sessions as JSON. Configuration changes for layout, theme, and keybindings hot-reload while openmux is running. The MIT-licensed project is listed at free. Installation options include a curl script, npm, Bun, source build, or prebuilt binaries for macOS Apple Silicon and Linux x64 or arm64.

Quil is a free, open-source terminal multiplexer for developers coordinating multi-tool workflows alongside AI coding assistants. It continuously saves tabs, panes, working directories, and layout, then restores that workspace after a host reboot. AI panes for Claude Code, OpenCode, and Codex can resume sessions after daemon restarts. Built-in pane types include terminals, those AI tools, SSH, Stripe CLI, lazygit, hunk, k9s, and lazysql. Its MCP server lets compatible clients such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Cursor interact with a running Quil session. Users can define pane types in TOML plugin files, which reload when saved. A command palette can find panes and tabs and search scrollback across panes. Quil runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows; remote attach over SSH to Linux or macOS is marked beta. It has no hosted version or cloud account and stores workspace state locally under ~/.quil/. The maker says it has no telemetry or database. Docker sandboxing is available for Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode, but network egress is not bounded and users supply the container image.