Ducks

A terminal multiplexer for CLI agents. Organize working directories into Places, run agents in separate tabs, and see their activity status in one interface.

Requirements

• Linux or macOS, Node.js ≥22.13, and npm.
• An interactive terminal of at least 80×24 cells.
• CLI agents installed and authenticated separately.

Installing node-pty may require Python and C++ build tools (Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS).

Run

From the project directory:

npm install
npm start -- --place /path/to/project

npm install builds the application automatically. In the opened shell, run your agent command, such as codex or claude.

Press Ctrl+B, then a to open another terminal, s to add a Place, ? for help, or q to quit.

Git branches in the sidebar show ● for uncommitted changes (including untracked files) and ↑N for commits ahead of the upstream branch. ↑? means the upstream count is unavailable. Status refreshes every second using local Git data; Ducks does not fetch from remotes.

To run directly from source during development:

npm run dev -- --place /path/to/project

After changing source files, run npm run build before using npm start again.

Features in action

Multiline prompts

Press Ctrl+B, then p to compose a prompt for the selected agent. Use Ctrl+Enter or Alt+Enter to send it, or Esc to keep the draft for later.

Find Places and agents

Press Ctrl+B, then f to search across Places and agent thread names. Select a result and press Enter to focus its terminal.

Dark and light themes

Press Ctrl+B, then m to preview six built-in themes. Use the arrow keys to switch, Enter to save, or Esc to restore the previous theme.