Setup

Terminal

My setup uses tmux in iTerm2. The shell auto-attaches on launch, and I spawn Claude Code panes with a one-line script.

tmux config highlights

• Mouse enabled (scroll, click, resize)
• Scrollback buffer: 50,000 lines
• True color support (tmux-256color)
• Pane border titles showing pane name
• aggressive-resize so multiple clients can have different window sizes
• Plugins via tpm: tmux-claude-code (session management), resurrect + continuum (auto-save every 15 min, but auto-restore disabled — it caused pane explosions with grouped sessions. Manual restore via prefix+Ctrl-r)

tmux-claude-code plugin

A TPM plugin for managing Claude Code sessions. Searches past conversations by keyword, resumes them in the correct working directory, and shows active session count in the status bar.

• prefix+c — new Claude Code pane
• prefix+C — new named pane
• prefix+Ctrl-r — resume session by keyword search
• prefix+Ctrl-b — browse all sessions with fzf
• cc list — list recent sessions with active/inactive status
• cc detect — show which panes are running CC

The keyword search is the key feature: it greps the first few user messages of every session transcript (~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl), excludes active sessions, decodes the project directory, and opens claude --resume in the right place. Smart pane detection uses child process checks and content markers to reliably identify CC panes even when they report zsh as their command.

Auto-attach on shell start

This block in .zshrc ensures every terminal session lands inside tmux — but skips VS Code terminals (which have their own Claude Code panel). SSH connections create a grouped session so phone and laptop share windows but can view them independently.

# Skip auto-attach in VS Code terminals (use VS Code's Claude Code panel instead)
if [[ -z "$TMUX" && -z "$VSCODE_INJECTION" ]]; then
  if [[ -n "$SSH_CONNECTION" ]]; then
    # Skip during tmux-resurrect restore to prevent pane explosion
    if [[ -z "$(tmux show-environment -g TMUX_RESTORING 2>/dev/null | grep -v '^-')" ]]; then
      tmux new-session -A -t c -s "remote-$$" \; new-window -n remote 'claude; exec zsh' 2>/dev/null || tmux new -s c 'claude; exec zsh'
    fi
  else
    tmux attach -t c 2>/dev/null || tmux new -s c 'claude; exec zsh'
  fi
fi

Navigation cheatsheet

Window organization

I group tmux windows by domain so prefix+0 through prefix+3 maps to a mental context switch, not a hunt through panes:

Each window has 5–8 panes in a tiled layout. I zoom into one pane with prefix+z to focus, then prefix+n/prefix+p to cycle through panes while staying zoomed. The meta pane at prefix+0 is a persistent Claude Code session that can inspect and reorganize everything else — moving panes between windows with join-pane, killing idle shells, or checking what a session was working on by reading its transcript.

Claude Code

Configuration lives in a dedicated repo: MaxGhenis/.claude

Key settings

• Remote Control: enabled for all sessions — every session is automatically accessible from claude.ai/code and the Claude mobile app. Start a standalone remote session with claude remote-control, or type /rc inside an existing session.
• teammateMode: in-process
• Bypass permissions: enabled for trusted repos
• Hooks:
  • enforce-package-managers — blocks wrong package managers per project
  • bounce-plan-gpt — automatically bounces implementation plans off GPT before exiting plan mode (max 2 rounds)
  • auto-commit-wip — commits work-in-progress on session end
  • warn-uncommitted — alerts on large uncommitted diffs
  • sync-setup-page — reminds Claude to update this page after dotfiles/config commits

Skills

13 on-demand skills that load based on conversation context (not preloaded). Examples: Whoop health data, Xero UK accounting, App Store Connect, GCP billing, OpenCollective expenses, Modal/Vercel deployment, OpenMessage patterns, agent teams, Slack patterns, Cloudflare domains.

Commands

12 slash commands including /briefing (daily summary), /search-everything (cross-platform search), /expense (OpenCollective filing), /config-tidy (audit and reorganize config layers), and more.

Plugins

• max-productivity (local) — custom commands + all 13 skills
• policyengine-claude — PolicyEngine design system and patterns
• rules-foundation — tax/benefit rules engine conventions
• frontend-design — production-grade UI generation
• plugin-dev — Claude Code plugin development

Dotfiles

Tracked in a separate repo: MaxGhenis/dotfiles

Contains .tmux.conf and .zshrc. Kept separate from .claude because these files also include non-Claude config (conda, NVM, Julia, PATH, etc.).

Home directory files are symlinks to the repo, so edits are always in sync:

~/.zshrc      → ~/dotfiles/.zshrc
~/.tmux.conf  → ~/dotfiles/.tmux.conf
~/bin/cc      → ~/tmux-claude-code/cc

Phone access

The simplest way: Remote Control. Every local session is automatically available at claude.ai/code and the Claude mobile app (iOS / Android) with no SSH or VPN.

For direct terminal access from a phone (e.g. to run shell commands), I also have:

• Grouped sessions: SSH creates a linked tmux session that shares windows but has its own independent view (cursor position, active pane)
• Tailscale: mesh VPN for networking between devices without port forwarding
• Termux on Android: full Linux environment for SSH access from a phone
• aggressive-resize: set in .tmux.conf so phone and laptop can have different window sizes simultaneously