tracker: surfaces/panes improvements/bugs

[JayGhiya]

Started using surfaces but sometimes when i open up say a coding agent in one surface in vertical tab where there are no more panes just multiple surfaces i get issues in application/tui-coding agent understanding the window size:

Second one of important usability improvement is to add rename to surfaces too. the interactive agents can already use i think as you added title to the cli but this is about using surfaces for humans and to allow them to rename

[wey-gu]

Thanks for the concrete flow, Jay. I opened #110 for this.

The sizing bug was that hidden pane-local surfaces kept running, but only the visible active surface was getting the current pane host bounds. That means a TUI agent started in a background surface could see bootstrap/stale rows and columns until the user focused it. The PR now keeps inactive surfaces resized to the same host bounds as the visible surface, without changing the existing panes.* / active-surface contract.

I also added human rename affordances: Command Palette, app menu, terminal context menu, and double-clicking a surface tab.

[wey-gu]

Follow-up pushed in #110.

I tightened the product model after testing the human flow:

• A pane remains the visible split rectangle.
• A surface is now treated visually as a compact tab-like session inside that pane, not as another full-width pane header.
• The rail is inset/pill-sized so a pane with two surfaces no longer reads as nested pane geometry.

For pi-interactive-subagents: Con should be API-ready for the pattern, but I would not make pi parse Con as if it were cmux. The cleaner adapter shape is Con-specific and JSON-first:

# first worker: create visible split pane and first surface
con-cli --json surfaces split --location right --title worker-1 --owner pi-interactive-subagents

# remember returned pane_id + surface_id

# later workers: create surface tabs inside that worker pane
con-cli --json surfaces create --pane-id <worker_pane_id> --title worker-2 --owner pi-interactive-subagents

# drive/read/cleanup
con-cli --json surfaces wait-ready --surface-id <surface_id> --timeout 10
con-cli --json surfaces send-text --surface-id <surface_id> "...\n"
con-cli --json surfaces read --surface-id <surface_id> --lines 120
con-cli --json surfaces close --surface-id <surface_id> --close-empty-owned-pane

This intentionally avoids a cmux-style identify --surface round trip because surfaces split already returns the new pane_id and surface_id.

[wey-gu]

@JayGhiya see new shape in next release :)

[wey-gu]

@JayGhiya i actually not 100% follow your flows, so might be not 100% fulfill the requirement, if possible you can record short videos to show your typical expected flow? and we can make con extremely helpful/fitting your flow :)

and when ready an adaptor to pi-interactive-subagents could be created based on that?

[JayGhiya]

okay went through this and now i will make this my main terminal multiplexer and yes will create adaptor probably tomorrow :) and get it reviewed by you and interactive subagents maintainer. Also next level speed and attention to detail. And one thing this from day 1 being cross platform and stable, i am quite out of words.

Very impressive. Also this is one of those software where i would love to it to be sustainable. so right now there is no one who charges like once lifetime or per year/three year for such tmux just like we have https://github.com/CapSoftware/cap , https://yaak.app . it is quite possible that you have already thought of this and have better thoughts but could not stop myself looking at all current tmux :)

[wey-gu]

Thanks a lot @JayGhiya for your nice words!

I am building it for getting hands hot on harness engineering and also due to there is no such thing out there, and it's a side project that gain energy for me due to my current major work's core is not open-source :p

Really appreciated your tolerance of its early shape and supportive on sharing your precious thoughts on con 🫡

[JayGhiya]

hey @wey-gu here is a pr for making con-cli work with interactive agents - HazAT/pi-interactive-subagents#47 . also there is a video in the pr of testing.

I think now we are ready to include con-cli as part of core con brew install :)

[wey-gu]

Wow amazing Jay🙇🫡!

Will enjoy/look into the video carefully when I get access to the laptop! I'm on a trip/flight today😄

[wey-gu]

Follow-up PR is up: #119. It bundles con-cli into the normal Con install path so pi-interactive-subagents can depend on it after Homebrew/script installs: macOS ships it inside the app bundle and exposes it through Homebrew/install.sh, Linux installs con + con-cli into ~/.local/bin, and Windows ZIP/install.ps1 includes con-cli.exe next to con-app.exe.