Manage multiple agents with agent view

Agent view, opened with claude agents, is one screen for all your background sessions: what’s running, what needs your input, and what’s done. Dispatch new sessions, watch their state at a glance instead of scrolling through transcripts, and step in only when one needs you. Each background session is a full Claude Code conversation that keeps running without a terminal attached, so you can open it, reply, and leave whenever you want.

Agent view in a terminal: the header shows Claude Code v2.1.140, the model, the working directory, and a summary count. Sessions are grouped under Needs input, Working, and Completed, with a dispatch input at the bottom and a footer of keyboard hints.

Use agent view when you have several independent tasks Claude can work on without you watching every step. Dispatch a bug fix, a pull request review, and a flaky-test investigation as three rows, keep working in another window, and check back when a row shows it needs you or has a result. When you want to work more directly in any agent’s session, attach to the row to enter the full conversation. To compare agent view with subagents, agent teams, and worktrees, see Run agents in parallel.

Agent view is in research preview and requires Claude Code v2.1.139 or later. Check your version with claude --version. The interface and keyboard shortcuts may change as the feature evolves.

This page covers:

Quick start: give Claude a task to work on in the background, check on it, and step in when needed
Monitor sessions with agent view, including state icons, peeking and replying, attaching, organizing, and keyboard shortcuts
Dispatch new agents from agent view, from inside a session, or from your shell
Manage sessions from the shell
How background sessions are hosted by the supervisor process

Quick start

This walkthrough covers the core agent view loop: dispatch a task, watch its row update as Claude works, peek to check on it and reply, and attach for the full conversation. The session you dispatch keeps running after you close agent view, so you can leave and come back to it.

Open agent view

From your shell, run:

claude agents

Agent view opens with an input at the bottom and a table that fills in as sessions start. Press Esc at any time to return to your shell. Your sessions keep running while you’re away and reappear the next time you open agent view.

Dispatch a session

Type a prompt describing a task and press Enter. A new background session starts on that task and appears as a row showing whether it’s working, waiting on you, or done. The new session uses the model shown in the agent view header and the same permission mode you’d get running claude in that directory.Every prompt you enter here starts its own new session. Typing another prompt and pressing Enter launches a second session alongside the first rather than sending a follow-up to it. You can run several in parallel this way.Each session uses your subscription quota independently, so see Limitations before dispatching many at once.

Peek and reply

Select a row with the arrow keys and press Space to open the peek panel. It shows the session’s most recent output, or the question it’s waiting on, rather than the full transcript. Type a reply and press Enter to send it without leaving agent view.

Attach and detach

Press Enter or → on a row to attach when you want the full conversation. The session takes over the terminal exactly as if you had run claude. Press ← on an empty prompt to detach and return to the table.

Bring an existing session in

To move a session you already have open into agent view, run /bg inside it, or press ← on an empty prompt to background it and open agent view in one step. The session keeps running and appears as a row alongside the ones you dispatched.

You can use claude agents as your primary entry point instead of claude: dispatch every task from agent view, attach when you want the full conversation, and press ← to return to the table.

Monitor sessions with agent view

Run claude agents to open agent view. It takes over the full terminal and lists every session grouped by state, with pinned sessions and the ones that need you at the top. Each row shows the session’s name, current activity, and how long ago it last changed. The list shows every background session you’ve started, across all your projects. A session working in one repository and another in a different worktree both appear here, regardless of which directory you opened agent view from. Interactive sessions you have open in other terminals don’t appear until you background them. Subagents and teammates a session spawns aren’t listed as separate rows.

Pinned
  ✽ clawd walk cycle          Write assets/sprites/clawd-walk.png           3m

Ready for review
  ∙ jump physics              github.com/example/game/pull/2048          ●  2h

Needs input
  ✻ power-up design           needs input: double jump or wall climb?       1m

Working
  ✽ collision detection       Edit src/physics/CollisionSystem.ts           2m
  ✢ playtest level 3          run 12 · all checkpoints cleared           in 4m

Completed
  ✻ title screen              result: menu, options, and credits done       9m
  ∙ sound effects             result: 14 SFX exported to assets/audio       4h
  … 6 more

Read session state

Each row starts with an icon whose color and animation show the session’s state:

State	Icon shows as	What it means
Working	Animated	Claude is actively running tools or generating a response
Needs input	Yellow	Claude is waiting on a specific question or permission decision from you
Idle	Dimmed	The session has nothing to do and is ready for your next prompt
Completed	Green	The task finished successfully
Failed	Red	The task ended with an error
Stopped	Grey	The session was stopped with `Ctrl+X` or `claude stop`

Separately, the icon’s shape shows whether the underlying process is running:

Shape	What it means
`✻` or animated `✽`	The session process is alive and replies immediately
`∙`	The process has exited. You can still peek, reply, or attach, and Claude restarts from where it left off
`✢`	A `/loop` session sleeping between iterations. The row shows its run count and a countdown

Background sessions don’t need any terminal open to keep working. A separate supervisor process runs them, so you can close agent view, close your shell, or start a new interactive session and your dispatched work keeps going. Session state persists on disk through auto-updates and supervisor restarts. If your machine sleeps or shuts down, running sessions stop; restart them with claude respawn --all.

Row summaries

The one-line summary in each row is generated by a Haiku-class model so the row can tell you what the session is doing, what it needs, or what it produced without opening the transcript. While a session is actively working, the summary refreshes at most once every 15 seconds, plus once when each turn ends. Each refresh is one short Haiku-class request through your normal provider, billed and handled under the same data usage terms as the session itself.

Pull request status

When a session opens a pull request, a status dot appears at the right edge of the row, linked to the pull request in terminals that support hyperlinks. When the session has opened more than one pull request, the count appears before the dot and the color reflects whichever one most needs attention.

Dot color	Pull request status
Yellow	Waiting on checks or review, or checks failed
Green	Checks passed and no review is blocking
Purple	Merged
Grey	Draft or closed

For most tasks this row is where you pick up the result: review and merge the pull request when the dot turns green.

Peek and reply

Press Space on a selected row to open the peek panel. It shows what the session needs from you, its most recent output, and any pull requests it opened. Most of the time this is enough, and you never need to open the full transcript. Type a reply in the peek panel and press Enter to send it to that session. When the session is asking a multiple-choice question, the peek panel shows the options and you can press a number key to pick one. For other blocked sessions, press Tab to fill the input with a suggested reply you can edit before sending. Prefix a reply with ! to send a Bash command instead. Use ↑ and ↓ to peek at adjacent sessions without closing the panel, or → to attach.

Attach to a session

Press Enter or → on a selected row to attach. Agent view is replaced by the full interactive session, exactly as if you had run claude in that directory. When you attach, Claude posts a short recap of what happened while you were away. While attached, the session behaves like any other Claude Code session: every command, keyboard shortcut, and feature works. Press ← on an empty prompt to detach and return to agent view. If a dialog has focus and isn’t responding to ←, press Ctrl+Z to detach immediately. Detaching never stops a background session: ←, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+D, Ctrl+Z, and /exit all leave it running. To end a session from inside it, run /stop. After you’ve dispatched or backgrounded a session, pressing ← on an empty prompt works from any Claude Code session, not only ones you attached to from agent view. It backgrounds the current session and opens agent view with that session pre-selected, so you can switch sessions without leaving the terminal. You can turn this shortcut off in /config.

Organize the list

Agent view groups sessions so the ones that need input are at the top, with Ready for review and Needs input above Working and Completed. These group names don’t map one-to-one to the states above: a session moves to Ready for review when it has an open pull request, and Completed collects finished, failed, and stopped sessions together. Press Ctrl+S to group by directory instead. Your choice persists across runs. Within a group:

Press Ctrl+T to pin a session to the top
Press Shift+↑ or Shift+↓ to reorder sessions
Press Ctrl+R to rename a session
Press Enter on a group header to collapse it

To remove a session from the list, press Ctrl+X to stop it and Ctrl+X again within two seconds to delete it. Pressing Ctrl+X on a group header deletes every session in that group after confirmation. Deleting removes the session from agent view and cleans up its worktree, including any uncommitted changes in it, so push or commit work you want to keep before deleting. The conversation transcript stays on disk and remains available through claude --resume. Older completed sessions fold into a … N more row to keep the list short. Failures and sessions with an open pull request always stay visible.

Filter sessions

Type in the dispatch input to filter instead of dispatching:

Filter	Shows
`a:<name>`	Sessions running the named agent
`s:<state>`	Sessions in the given state, such as `s:working`. Also accepts `s:blocked` for everything waiting on you
`#<number>` or a PR URL	The session working on that pull request

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? in agent view to see every shortcut in context. The table below summarizes them.

Shortcut	Action
`↑` / `↓`	Move between rows
`Enter`	Attach to the selected session, or dispatch if there’s text in the input
`Space`	Open or close the peek panel for the selected session
`Shift+Enter`	Dispatch and attach immediately
`→`	Attach to the selected session
`Alt+1`..`Alt+9`	Attach to session 1–9 in the current group
`Tab`	On an empty input, browse all subagents. Otherwise apply the highlighted suggestion
`Ctrl+S`	Switch grouping between state and directory
`Ctrl+T`	Pin or unpin the selected session
`Ctrl+R`	Rename the selected session
`Ctrl+G`	Open the dispatch prompt in your `$EDITOR`
`Ctrl+X`	Stop the session; press again within two seconds to delete it
`Shift+↑` / `Shift+↓`	Reorder the selected session
`Esc`	Close the peek panel, clear the input, or exit
`Ctrl+C`	Clear the input; press twice to exit
`?`	Show all shortcuts

Dispatch new agents

You can dispatch new background sessions from agent view, send an existing interactive session to the background, or start one directly from the shell.

From agent view

Type a prompt in the input at the bottom of agent view and press Enter to start a new background session. The session is named automatically from the prompt; rename it later with Ctrl+R. Paste an image into the prompt to include a screenshot or diagram with the task. Prefix or mention parts of the prompt to control how the session starts:

Input	Effect
`<agent-name> <prompt>`	If the first word matches a custom subagent name, that subagent runs as the session’s main agent with the configuration from its frontmatter
`@<agent-name>`	Mention a custom subagent anywhere in the prompt to run it as the main agent
`@<repo>`	Mention a repository under the directory you opened agent view from to run the session there
`/<skill>`	Suggest skills to dispatch as the prompt
`#<number>` or a pull request URL	If a session is already working on that PR, select it instead of dispatching
`Shift+Enter`	Dispatch and immediately attach to the new session

Packaging a recurring task as a skill lets you start the same workflow from agent view repeatedly without retyping the prompt. When the same @name matches both a subagent and a sibling repository, the subagent takes precedence. The bare first-word match also applies, so a prompt that happens to begin with one of your subagent names dispatches that subagent rather than treating the word as plain text. Use the @ form when you want to be explicit, or start the prompt with a different word to avoid the match.

Dispatch to a specific directory

A new session runs in the directory you opened agent view from. To target a different directory:

Open claude agents in that directory.
Open claude agents in a parent directory that holds several repositories and mention one with @<repo> in the prompt to run the session there.
From the shell, cd into the directory and run claude --bg "<prompt>".

When agent view is grouped by directory, the highlighted row’s directory becomes the dispatch target, so you can scroll to a group and dispatch into it without retyping the path.

From inside a session

Run /background or its alias /bg to move the current conversation into a background session. Pass a prompt such as /bg run the test suite and fix any failures to give one more instruction first. Backgrounding from an interactive session starts a fresh process that resumes from the saved conversation, so running subagents, monitors, and background commands do not transfer to it. Claude asks you to confirm before backgrounding when any are running. Once in the background, the session can start new subagents, monitors, and background commands, and those keep running across later detach and reattach.

From your shell

Pass --bg to start a session that goes straight to the background:

claude --bg "investigate the flaky SettingsChangeDetector test"

To run a specific subagent as the session’s main agent, combine --bg with --agent:

claude --agent code-reviewer --bg "address review comments on PR 1234"

After backgrounding, Claude prints the session’s short ID and the commands for managing it:

backgrounded · 7c5dcf5d
  claude agents             list sessions
  claude attach 7c5dcf5d    open in this terminal
  claude logs 7c5dcf5d      show recent output
  claude stop 7c5dcf5d      stop this session

How file edits are isolated

Every background session, whether started from agent view, /bg, or claude --bg, starts in your working directory. Before editing files, Claude moves the session into an isolated git worktree under .claude/worktrees/, so parallel sessions can read the same checkout but each writes to its own. Claude skips this when the session is already under .claude/worktrees/, when the working directory isn’t a git repository, or for writes outside the working directory. Outside a git repository, sessions write to the working directory directly and aren’t isolated from each other, so avoid dispatching parallel sessions that edit the same files. The worktree is removed when you delete the session, so merge or push the changes you want to keep before you delete. To find a session’s worktree path, peek the session or attach and check its working directory. To make a subagent always run in its own worktree regardless of how it was started, set isolation: worktree in its frontmatter.

Set the model

The model name shown in the agent view header is the dispatch default. New sessions you start from the input use this model, which is the same setting /model controls in any session. To override it for the whole agent view session, pass --model when opening agent view. See Permission mode, model, and effort. Each background session can run on a different model. To override it for one session:

From the shell, pass --model with claude --bg.
Attach to a running session and run /model there. The change persists if the session is respawned.
Dispatch a subagent whose frontmatter sets a model field.

Permission mode, model, and effort

A dispatched session reads its settings and permission mode from the directory it runs in, the same as if you had started claude there. To set defaults for every session you dispatch from agent view, pass any of --permission-mode, --model, or --effort when opening it:

claude agents --permission-mode plan --model opus --effort high

The active defaults appear in the footer below the dispatch input. Without these flags, the session uses the defaultMode from that directory’s settings or the permissionMode from the dispatched subagent’s frontmatter, and the model shown in the agent view header. Using bypassPermissions or auto is refused until you have accepted that mode by running claude with it once interactively, since those modes let a session you aren’t watching act without approval. The same applies whether you pass the mode to claude agents or to claude --bg --permission-mode.

Settings, plugins, and MCP servers

Agent view accepts the same configuration flags as claude for loading settings, plugins, MCP servers, and additional directories. Each flag applies to agent view itself and is passed through to every session you dispatch from it, so a plugin or MCP server you load this way is available in those sessions too.

Flag	Effect
`--settings <file-or-json>`	Override settings for agent view and dispatched sessions
`--add-dir <path>`	Grant file access to an additional directory
`--plugin-dir <path>`	Load a plugin from a local directory
`--mcp-config <file-or-json>`	Load MCP servers from a config file or JSON string
`--strict-mcp-config`	Use only the MCP servers from `--mcp-config`, ignoring other MCP configuration

Repeat --add-dir, --plugin-dir, or --mcp-config once per value. The space-separated form, such as --add-dir a b c, is not supported with claude agents. The following example opens agent view with a settings override and one extra directory:

claude agents --settings ./ci-settings.json --add-dir ../shared-lib

Manage sessions from the shell

Every background session has a short ID you can use from the shell. The ID is printed when you start a session with claude --bg, and each session’s ID is its directory name under ~/.claude/jobs/. These commands are useful for scripting or when you don’t want to open agent view.

Command	Purpose
`claude agents`	Open agent view
`claude attach <id>`	Attach to a session in this terminal
`claude logs <id>`	Print the session’s recent output
`claude stop <id>`	Stop a session. Also accepts `claude kill`
`claude respawn <id>`	Restart a stopped session with its conversation intact
`claude respawn --all`	Restart every stopped session
`claude rm <id>`	Remove a session from the list. Cleans up its worktree if there are no uncommitted changes

How background sessions are hosted

Every session listed in agent view is considered a background session, whether or not you’re currently attached to it. By contrast, a session started by running claude directly is tied to that terminal and ends when it closes, unless you send it to the background.

The supervisor process

Background sessions are hosted by a per-user supervisor process, separate from your terminal and from agent view. The supervisor starts automatically the first time you background a session or open agent view, and you don’t manage it directly. The supervisor and its sessions authenticate with the same credentials as your interactive sessions and make no additional network connections beyond the model API. Each background session is its own Claude Code process, managed by the supervisor rather than tied to your terminal. A session that’s actively working, waiting for your input, or has a terminal attached keeps its process running. Once a session finishes and sits unattached for about an hour, the supervisor stops its process to free resources. The transcript and state stay on disk, and the next time you attach, peek, or reply, the supervisor starts a fresh process from where it left off. When every session has finished and no terminal is connected, the supervisor itself exits and starts again the next time you need it. The supervisor watches the installed Claude Code binary on disk and restarts into the new version after the regular auto-updater replaces it. This is a local file watch, not a network check. Background sessions are detached processes, so they keep running through the restart and the new supervisor reconnects to them.

Where state is stored

Session state is stored under your Claude Code config directory. If you set CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, the supervisor uses that directory instead of ~/.claude and runs as a separate instance with its own sessions.

Path	Contents
`~/.claude/daemon.log`	Supervisor log
`~/.claude/daemon/roster.json`	List of running background sessions, used to reconnect after a restart
`~/.claude/jobs/<id>/state.json`	Per-session state shown in agent view

Turn off agent view

To turn off background agents and agent view entirely, set the disableAgentView setting to true or set the CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_AGENT_VIEW environment variable. Administrators can enforce this through managed settings.

Troubleshooting

`claude agents` lists subagents instead of opening agent view

If claude agents prints a count followed by your configured subagents and then exits, agent view is unavailable in your environment. Earlier versions didn’t open agent view in every environment, including when connected through Bedrock, Vertex AI, or Foundry. Run claude update to install the latest version. If agent view still does not open after updating, check whether it has been turned off by a setting or environment variable.

Agent view opens with no sessions

Agent view is empty until you dispatch your first session. Type a prompt in the input at the bottom and press Enter.

Cannot open agents because background tasks are running

If pressing ← to background the current session shows Cannot open agents — N background task(s) running, the session has in-flight work such as a subagent, a workflow, or a background shell command, and the shortcut won’t silently abandon it. Run /tasks to see what’s running, then /bg to confirm abandoning them. See From inside a session for what does and doesn’t transfer when you background.

Prompt rejected as too short

The dispatch input expects a task description, not a conversational opener. A prompt shorter than four characters is rejected with a Too short hint so a stray keystroke doesn’t start a session. Describe what you want the session to do, such as investigate the flaky checkout test.

Sessions show as failed after waking your machine

Background sessions don’t survive sleep or shutdown, so sessions that were running show as failed after you wake. Attach, peek, or reply to any of them and the session restarts from where it left off. To restart all of them at once, run claude respawn --all.

A session is slow to respond after attaching

Once a session has finished and sat unattached for about an hour, the supervisor stops its process to free resources. Attaching starts a fresh process from where it left off, which takes a moment. Sessions that are working or waiting on you are never stopped this way.

`.claude/worktrees/` is filling up

Worktrees are removed when you delete the session that created them. If a session ended without cleaning up, list leftover entries with git worktree list in the project directory and remove each with git worktree remove <path>. See Clean up worktrees.

Limitations

Agent view is in research preview with the following limitations:

Rate limits apply: background sessions consume your subscription usage the same as interactive sessions, so running ten agents in parallel uses quota roughly ten times as fast as running one.
Sessions are local: background sessions run on your machine and stop if it sleeps or shuts down.
Worktrees are deleted with the session: merge or push changes before deleting a session that edited files in its own worktree.

For other ways to run Claude in parallel, see:

Run agents in parallel: compare agent view with subagents, agent teams, and worktrees
Agent teams: coordinate multiple sessions that message each other
Claude Code on the web: run sessions in a managed cloud environment instead of locally

Agents and parallel work

Tools and plugins

Automation

Troubleshooting

Manage multiple agents with agent view

Quick start

Monitor sessions with agent view

Read session state

Row summaries

Pull request status

Peek and reply

Attach to a session

Organize the list

Filter sessions

Keyboard shortcuts

Dispatch new agents

From agent view

Dispatch to a specific directory

From inside a session

From your shell

How file edits are isolated

Set the model

Permission mode, model, and effort

Settings, plugins, and MCP servers

Manage sessions from the shell

How background sessions are hosted

The supervisor process

Where state is stored

Turn off agent view

Troubleshooting

`claude agents` lists subagents instead of opening agent view

Agent view opens with no sessions

Cannot open agents because background tasks are running

Prompt rejected as too short

Sessions show as failed after waking your machine

A session is slow to respond after attaching

`.claude/worktrees/` is filling up

Limitations

Agents and parallel work

Tools and plugins

Automation

Troubleshooting

Documentation Index

​Quick start

​Monitor sessions with agent view

​Read session state

​Row summaries

​Pull request status

​Peek and reply

​Attach to a session

​Organize the list

​Filter sessions

​Keyboard shortcuts

​Dispatch new agents

​From agent view

​Dispatch to a specific directory

​From inside a session

​From your shell

​How file edits are isolated

​Set the model

​Permission mode, model, and effort

​Settings, plugins, and MCP servers

​Manage sessions from the shell

​How background sessions are hosted

​The supervisor process

​Where state is stored

​Turn off agent view

​Troubleshooting

​claude agents lists subagents instead of opening agent view

​Agent view opens with no sessions

​Cannot open agents because background tasks are running

​Prompt rejected as too short

​Sessions show as failed after waking your machine

​A session is slow to respond after attaching

​.claude/worktrees/ is filling up

​Limitations

​Related resources

Quick start

Monitor sessions with agent view

Read session state

Row summaries

Pull request status

Peek and reply

Attach to a session

Organize the list

Filter sessions

Keyboard shortcuts

Dispatch new agents

From agent view

Dispatch to a specific directory

From inside a session

From your shell

How file edits are isolated

Set the model

Permission mode, model, and effort

Settings, plugins, and MCP servers

Manage sessions from the shell

How background sessions are hosted

The supervisor process

Where state is stored

Turn off agent view

Troubleshooting

`claude agents` lists subagents instead of opening agent view

Agent view opens with no sessions

Cannot open agents because background tasks are running

Prompt rejected as too short

Sessions show as failed after waking your machine

A session is slow to respond after attaching

`.claude/worktrees/` is filling up

Limitations

Related resources