CTOP – Terminal Pane for Monitoring AI Agents

Developer Aakash Desai released CTOP, a terminal pane for monitoring AI coding agents including Claude Code, Codex CLI, OpenCode, and Devin, providing real-time CPU, memory, token usage, context window, cost estimation, and session control. The open-source tool, installable via Homebrew, npm, or npx, offers multi-agent monitoring, live log tailing, and a plugin system, aiming to improve developer workflow when running multiple AI coding sessions.

htop for your AI coding agents. Monitor Claude Code, Codex CLI, OpenCode, and Devin sessions — CPU, memory, tokens, context window, costs, branches — from a single terminal pane. Multi-agent monitoring — Claude Code + Codex CLI + OpenCode + Devin, real-time CPU/memory/status Context window tracking — visual bar with input, cache, output, and free segments Cost estimation — per-session and aggregate API cost Claude + OpenAI pricing Token waveform — real-time sparkline showing token activity pulse Two view modes — list view table and pane view card grid , toggle with P Live log tailing — stream conversation in a split pane L Sort, filter, search — by CPU, memory, context, branch, model, or full-text F Dashboard & history — aggregate stats d , 24-hour usage charts H Process control — kill sessions graceful or force , bulk multi-select close, quick-jump to project dir Desktop notifications — get notified when sessions complete 5 color themes — default, minimal, dracula, solarized, monokai + custom Plugin system — extend with custom columns via ~/.ctop/plugins/ Compaction & rate limit detection — flags compaction events and quota usage CLI mode for agents — ctop ls , ctop whoami , ctop alerts , … see CLI mode cli-mode-for-agents-and-scripts Homebrew brew tap aakashadesara/ctop && brew install ctop-claude npm npm install -g ctop-claude npx no install npx ctop-claude From source git clone https://github.com/aakashadesara/ctop.git chmod +x ctop/claude-manager ln -s "$ pwd /ctop/claude-manager" /usr/local/bin/ctop Then run ctop . If no agents are running, you'll see an empty state — start a Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or Devin session and it'll appear on the next refresh. | Key | Action | |---|---| j / k or ↑ / ↓ | Navigate | h / l or ← / → | Navigate pane mode | g / G | Jump to first / last | P | Toggle list / pane view | p | Pin / unpin session sticks it to the top | Space | Mark / unmark session multi-select | Shift+↑ / ↓ or V | Extend / start a marked range | a | Select all visible / clear | s / S | Cycle sort / reverse | / | Filter | F | Full-text search conversations | d | Toggle dashboard | L | Toggle log pane | H | Toggle 24-hour history | W | Timeline view | T | Cycle color theme | x / X | Kill SIGTERM / SIGKILL — bulk if rows are marked | K | Kill ALL agents | A | Kill ALL stopped/dead agents | o / e / t | Open dir in Finder / editor / terminal | n | Toggle notifications | ? | Help | Esc | Clear selection or filter / search | q | Quit | Mouse: click to select, scroll to navigate, click the ★ gutter to pin/unpin, Shift +click to mark best-effort . Keep the sessions you care about in view. Press p or click the ★ in a row's gutter, or the Pin footer button to pin the session under the cursor — it jumps to a yellow ★ Pinned section at the top and stays there regardless of sort or filter. Pinning works in list, group, and pane views. Pins are keyed by session identity not pid , so they survive refreshes, the session restarting, and quitting ctop — persisted to ~/.ctop/pins.json . Press p again to unpin. Mark several sessions and act on them at once. Press Space to mark the session under the cursor, or hold Shift while pressing ↑ / ↓ to extend a range; press V for vim-style range mode then move to extend and a to select all visible. With sessions marked, x / X close the whole set after a confirmation prompt; Esc clears the selection. Works in list, pane, and group views. Shift+click note:many terminals Terminal.app, iTerm2, GNOME Terminal, … reserve Shift +click for their own text selection and never forward it to the app, so Shift +click marking is best-effort. The keyboard path Space / Shift + ↑ / ↓ / V works everywhere. A self-contained ctop skill /aakashadesara/ctop/blob/main/skills/ctop/SKILL.md ships in this repo. Drop it into Claude Code so any agent learns when and how to call ctop : Per-project mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills/ctop .claude/skills/ Or user-wide mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r skills/ctop ~/.claude/skills/ Once installed, ask any Claude Code session things like "what other agents am I running" , "how much have my sessions cost" , "is my context about to compact" — the agent will reach for ctop automatically. Skill files: — trigger sheet + common patterns SKILL.md — full per-command spec reference.md — copy-pasteable recipes examples.md ctop with no args starts the interactive TUI. ctop <subcommand runs a one-shot query and exits, so AI agents can introspect their own sessions and sister sessions from another terminal. ctop ls Table of every running agent ctop ls --json Same, machine-parseable ctop ls --agent claude Filter by backend ctop ls --cwd ~/code/myproj Filter by directory ctop get <pid --json Full detail on one session ctop log <pid --tail 20 Last 20 conversation messages ctop search "TODO" --json Full-text search across sessions ctop diff <pid Git diff for the session's cwd ctop stats --json Aggregate cost / tokens / counts ctop whoami Detect which session you're in ctop whoami --pid-only PID only, for scripting ctop alerts Low-context / idle / ghost warnings ctop alerts --severity critical Only critical-level alerts ctop kill <pid SIGTERM must be your own user ctop kill <pid --force SIGKILL ctop notify "title" "message" Desktop notification whoami detects the calling session via $CTOP PID → parent-PID walk → $PWD match, with a matchConfidence label exact | ppid | cwd-guess | none so agents know how much to trust the answer. Read tools surface data that the user could read off disk anyway. kill enforces uid ownership and an agent-session check before sending the signal — there is no kill-all. Find sessions about to compact ctop ls --json | jq '. | select .contextPct = null and .contextPct < 20 ' Self-aware compaction hook "$ ctop whoami --json | jq -r .session.contextPct " -lt 15 && \ echo "context low — consider /compact" Clean up ghost sessions ctop alerts --json | jq -r '. | select .kind=="ghost" | .pid' | \ xargs -I {} ctop kill {} --force ctop --refresh 3 Refresh every 3 seconds ctop --context-limit 128000 Set context window to 128k ctop --pane Start in pane view { "refreshInterval": 5000, "contextLimit": 200000, "defaultView": "list", "theme": "default", "contextBarStyle": "block", "notifications": { "enabled": true, "minDuration": 30 } } CLI flags override config file values. Reads process info from ps PowerShell on Windows , resolves working directories via lsof , and enriches each process with session metadata from local JSONL files ~/.claude/projects/ for Claude, ~/.codex/sessions/ for Codex and SQLite databases ~/.local/share/opencode/ for OpenCode, ~/.local/share/devin/cli/ for Devin . No network calls, no external dependencies. Extend with custom columns. Create .js files in ~/.ctop/plugins/ : module.exports = { name: 'my-plugin', column: { header: 'CUSTOM', width: 10, getValue: proc = proc.cwd ? 'yes' : 'no', }, }; See examples/plugins/ for more. Node.js 18+ macOS, Linux, or Windows — Windows uses PowerShell for process detection; CWD resolution is more limited than macOS/Linux. Claude Code , Codex CLI , OpenCode , and/or Devin terminal running sessionson PATH for OpenCode and Devin session reads built-in on macOS; available via sqlite3 apt / brew on Linux PRs welcome Fork, clone, run ./claude-manager to develop, npm test to test. Open an issue first for large changes.