Interactive Bash

interactive_bash runs commands inside a persistent tmux session. Use it for TUI applications that need a real terminal — debuggers, editors, dashboards. One-shot commands should still use the regular Bash tool.

Usage

Commands are tmux subcommands — no tmux prefix needed.

# Create a new session
interactive_bash(tmux_command="new-session -d -s dev-app")

# Send keystrokes to a session
interactive_bash(tmux_command="send-keys -t dev-app 'vim main.py' Enter")

# Capture pane output
interactive_bash(tmux_command="capture-pane -p -t dev-app")

When to use

• Interactive debuggers (pudb, pdb, lldb).
• TUI editors (vim, nvim) for inspection.
• Live dashboards (htop, k9s).
• Anything that needs a persistent terminal across multiple agent turns.

When not to use

• One-shot commands — use plain Bash with & for backgrounding instead.
• Commands that just need stdout — Bash is faster.

Source Notes

Aligned with upstream docs/reference/features.md#interactive-terminal-tools.