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Posted by shideneyu 7 hours ago

Show HN: Rmux – A programmable terminal multiplexer with a Playwright-style SDK(github.com)
Author here. RMUX started from a frustration: I've used tmux for years and got tired of scraping output with grep and sleeps to automate anything. So I rebuilt the multiplexer from scratch in Rust, with a programmable layer on top.

Two surfaces: a tmux-compatible CLI (~90 commands, your keybindings just work), and a typed async Rust SDK on the same daemon — stable pane IDs, structured snapshots, locator-style waits. The idea is Playwright-style automation, but for terminals.

Native on Linux, macOS, Windows (real ConPTY, no WSL).

Demos and docs at rmux.io. Happy to answer questions about the daemon protocol, ConPTY, or the SDK design.

141 points | 68 commentspage 2
0x1ceb00da 5 hours ago|
Getting this error when installing from git bash:

$ curl -fsSL https://rmux.io/install.sh | sh rmux install: unsupported OS: MINGW64_NT-10.0-26200

notorandit 5 hours ago||
Scriptable terminal multiplexer?

Interesting portable scripting thingy. But it would only work with portable tools, not just everything. Especially with Windows tools.

shideneyu 5 hours ago|
I wrote it for rust apps in mind, same usecase as for Ratatui. You’re right maybe I need to expose more tools with the cli
cat-whisperer 5 hours ago||
I used to use ghostty's applescript and built that into a claude skill. It worked like a charm. But this feels super interesting for programmability
kosolam 7 hours ago||
Hey, I automate tmux all the time with send keys and capture.. how is your project improves vs tmux or zellij?
shideneyu 6 hours ago||
rmux is much faster than tmux or zellj, I did some internal benchmark and it's promising. rmux is a multiplexer engine, meaning that you can rewrite entirely zellij using rmux.. I created a mini zellij in a few hundred lines of rust. You can check the demoes on the repo
kosolam 6 hours ago||
But wait, I’m a user of tmux or zellij which for me was basically another tmux and I went back to tmux eventually. I’m not looking to develop another tmux or something. Is this project more of a library to create tmux like apps?
shideneyu 6 hours ago||
As of today you can replace tmux by rmux. Its behavior should be 1-1 iso; tmux is more stable though, it has been battle tested with a dozen of years of edge cases refinement. rmux is a faster and more elegant clone of tmux + windows support + programmable sdk
Galanwe 6 hours ago|||
I don't get it as well, everything mentioned in the readme is already trivially possible with tmux or zellij
shideneyu 6 hours ago||
windows support + async + public sdk. You can rewrite zellij with rmux, but not the opposite. rmux is a multiplexer engine
noodletheworld 7 hours ago|||
I mean, the obvious immediate answer is “windows”, which tmux flat out doesn't support (except via WSL and a shared mount).
small_model 7 hours ago||
Never had the need to do playwright automation for tmux, so not sure why I would use this above tmux which works well.
shideneyu 7 hours ago|
with rmux you can finally do acceptance/integration tests on your terminal user interfaces. tmux is made for humans, rmux is made for both humans and machines
yes_but_no 5 hours ago||
Floating panes seems not possible, or are they?
shideneyu 5 hours ago|
Not part of the current version, it’s on my roadmap :)
elromulous 6 hours ago||
Can someone describe the pros/cons vs zellij?
shideneyu 6 hours ago|
You can rewrite Zellij entirely with rmux , that's the main difference. I put a demo on the repo. Because rmux is an engine. I wrote it to be the multiplexer of multiplexers
DeathArrow 5 hours ago||
1. ask Claude to rewrite X in Rust

2. ask Claude to make a website and claim R is better than X because it's Rust

3. advertise on HN, X and Reddit

4. ???

5. profit!

miroljub 5 hours ago||
If the tokens are already burned, it's better for the environment to share the result for everyone to use it.
tomaspiaggio12 31 minutes ago||
[dead]
perkovsky 2 hours ago|
[dead]
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