openmux vs Séance

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.

Séance is a free, Linux-only terminal multiplexer for tracking AI coding-agent sessions. It follows Claude Code, Codex, Pi, OpenCode, and Antigravity CLI sessions, and shows whether each is working, awaiting permission, or idle. Permission requests and task completions can generate desktop notifications with unread tracking. Its panes scroll horizontally, with workspaces, tabs within columns, a command palette, focus-follows-mouse, and session persistence across restarts. The app uses GTK4, libadwaita, and libghostty, and supports X11 and Wayland. The `seance ctl` command connects to a running instance over a Unix domain socket; commands can return JSON, manage workspaces and panes, send input, and read terminal output. The project states that it has no telemetry and is licensed under MIT. Installation options include Arch Linux AUR, a Nix flake, and an x86_64 AppImage. OpenCode remote attach sessions and `--pure` launches are not tracked. Séance is pre-1.0, and only the latest release receives security fixes.