The IDE model
Depth:
What it is
The aitasks IDE is a tmux session organized by window-naming convention, not a fixed layout. The framework reserves a small set of window names — monitor, board, codebrowser, settings, brainstorm, plus an agent-<n> prefix for code agent windows — and the integrated TUIs all look up tmux windows by these names. Open, close, rearrange, or split them however you like; what matters is the name.
The Monitor TUI acts as the conventional home screen, listing every code agent and TUI window in the session with a live preview and keystroke forwarding. Pressing j in any main TUI opens the TUI switcher dialog, which lists every integrated TUI plus every running code agent window — selecting an entry either focuses the existing window (looked up by name) or spawns it on the fly. A narrow Minimonitor sidebar variant of monitor can sit next to a code agent pane to keep sibling activity visible without giving up screen real estate.
ait ide bootstraps such a session — installing the wrappers (if needed), opening the tmux session, launching monitor, and starting whichever agent windows you have configured — but you can also attach to an existing session and the convention still applies.
Why it exists
A code agent is most useful when it can be observed and steered without interrupting it. Building the IDE around tmux rather than a graphical shell means the same workflow runs identically over SSH, in a screen-shared remote pairing session, and on every operating system the framework supports. Centering it on the monitor TUI gives every pane a single home screen with live previews and keystroke forwarding, so spawning a new agent or checking on a sibling is always one keystroke away.
How to use
The command-line entry point — ait ide, its flags, and the session-sharing gotcha — is documented in Terminal Setup. The integrated TUI list lives in the TUIs section.
See also
- Monitor TUI — the home screen
- Agent memory — how the Code Browser surfaces archived task context
- Locks — multi-agent coordination inside the IDE
Next: Agent memory