TMonitor - Terminal Monitor for Multi-Pane Development Workflows

TMonitor is a lightweight shell-based utility to streamline your terminal-based development workflow using tmux. It allows you to define commands to run in separate panes and gives you a free interactive shell, all in one tmux session — perfect for managing logs, workers, build tools, and even SSH-based workflows.

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✨ Motivation

In nearly every development scenario — whether you're building web apps, CLI tools, APIs, or background jobs — we constantly perform repetitive terminal tasks:

• Tailing logs
• Restarting queues or workers
• Running build tools (e.g., npm, vite, php artisan, composer)
• Navigating into project directories and managing subprocesses

Doing this manually every time eats up focus and time.

TMonitor was created to automate this routine with a single command.

It’s also incredibly useful for managing remote SSH-based workflows. Quickly spin up sessions on remote servers to monitor logs, debug services, or handle long-running workers — all within a structured tmux layout.

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✅ Features

• Automatically creates a 4-pane tmux session:
  • 3 top panes run predefined commands (CMD1, CMD2, CMD3)
  • 1 bottom pane stays interactive (a free shell)

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│  Pane 0    │  Pane 1    │  Pane 2    │
│  CMD1      │  CMD2      │  CMD3      │
├────────────┴────────────┴────────────┤
│               Pane 3                 │
│           Interactive Shell          │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘

• Easy reload with Opt+R (reloads commands)
• Exit safely with Opt+Q (asks for confirmation)
• Customizable via a simple .conf file
• Works with local and remote sessions via SSH

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🧪 Tested On

• macOS Sequoia
• tmux 3.5a

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🛠️ Installation

1. Clone or move the scripts to a permanent directory (recommended: ~/.tmux/scripts/)

2. Make both scripts executable:

   chmod +x ~/.tmux/scripts/tmonitor.sh
   chmod +x ~/.tmux/scripts/reload_tmonitor.sh

3. Add this alias to your shell config (.zshrc, .bashrc, etc):

   alias tmonitor='~/.tmux/scripts/tmonitor.sh "$PWD"'

4. Reload your shell:

   source ~/.zshrc

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📁 Project Structure

~/.tmux/scripts/
│
├── tmonitor.sh           # Starts the tmux session with custom panes
├── reload_tmonitor.sh    # Reloads the session and re-runs commands

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⚙️ Configuration

In your project directory, create a tmonitor.conf file:

Example: tmonitor.conf

SESSION_NAME="My Laravel App Monitor"

CMD1="tail -f storage/logs/laravel.log"
CMD2="composer dumpa && php artisan optimize:clear && npm run build && php artisan queue:work"
CMD3="php artisan command:run-custom-command"

• SESSION_NAME (optional): Custom name for the tmux session
• CMD1, CMD2, CMD3: Commands to run in top panes

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🚀 Usage

From your project root (where tmonitor.conf exists):

tmonitor

This opens a tmux session with 4 panes: 3 running your custom commands, and a bottom pane ready for your input.

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🔁 Hotkeys

Inside the tmux session:

• Opt + Q → Quit session (with confirmation)
• Opt + R → Reload commands (without restarting session)

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🧭 Roadmap

Planned features to extend TMonitor:

• Support for custom layouts (e.g., vertical splits, grid)
• More than 3 command panes with dynamic layout
• Custom labels or titles for panes
• Integration with system stats (CPU, memory, disk)
• Persist pane state and session recovery

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📌 Notes

• Ensure your .conf file exists and includes all required variables.
• Works well for local development and remote SSH sessions.
• Designed to minimize cognitive load and maximize focus during dev cycles.

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🤝 Contributions

Feel free to fork, improve, or submit PRs. Ideas and feedback are always welcome!

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📄 License

MIT