tabby-agent-sessions

Feasibility skeleton: a Tabby side pane listing AI agent sessions for the focused terminal's working directory, backed by asbutler.

How it works

Tabby has no sidebar extension point (verified against builtin-plugins/*/typings — zero sidebar/sidePanel hits). The supported equivalent is a split pane holding our own tab:

• ToolbarButtonProvider adds a toolbar button that toggles the pane
• the button splits the active SplitTabComponent and inserts SessionListTabComponent on the right (addTab(panel, relative, 'r')) — terminals leave more slack on that side
• the pane follows the focused sibling via SplitTabComponent.focusChanged$, reading session.getWorkingDirectory()
• session data comes from asbutler list --path <cwd> (JSON) — parsing is not reimplemented here, so adding an agent in Go surfaces it in Tabby for free
• SSH terminals work too: asbutler is run on the remote host over Tabby's existing authenticated connection, so no second login. If it isn't installed there, the pane says so and links to the asbutler releases, instead of showing an empty list
• a click selects a row; double-click (or the hover ▶) types that agent's resume command into the adjacent terminal (claude --resume <id>, kiro-cli chat --resume-id <id>). Refused for a locked session, for an agent with no known resume command, and while that terminal is running something
• the hover ✎ renames a session via asbutler rename, editing the title in place — Enter commits, Escape cancels. Untitled sessions start from an empty box rather than asbutler's (untitled · …) placeholder
• the hover ✕ deletes via asbutler rm, behind a native confirm dialog that defaults to Cancel. Permanent — asbutler unlinks the file and the JSON exposes no path for the plugin to trash it instead
• cmd/ctrl-click toggles rows and shift-click extends a range; with two or more selected, a Delete bar removes them in one asbutler rm call, skipping any held by a running agent
• Kiro keeps some sessions in two stores under the same id (opening a v1 session copies it to v2), so rows are badged v1 and keyed by id and store. Resume passes --session-source, and delete/rename pass --store, since asbutler refuses an ambiguous id rather than picking one
• agent chips filter the rows already fetched, so switching filters costs nothing; sessions whose directory no longer exists are badged orphan
• while a directory switch is in flight the previous rows are dimmed and inert, so an action can't land on the directory you just left

Requirements

asbutler >= 0.8.1 (releases), installed on whichever machine the terminal is on — this one for local shells, the remote host for SSH. Querying one directory matters: --path narrows before asbutler enriches, so one directory costs ~0.8s where machine-wide costs ~36s.

The binary is resolved by searching ~/.local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/bin, then $PATH — a GUI-launched Electron app only inherits /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin from launchd, so $PATH alone doesn't find ~/.local/bin. Override if it lives elsewhere:

Develop

npm install
npm run check          # tsc --noEmit + Angular template parse + unit tests
npm test               # asbutler transport/parsing only; needs no Angular
npm run build          # or: npm run watch
ln -sfn "$PWD" ~/Library/Application\ Support/tabby/plugins/node_modules/tabby-agent-sessions

Restart Tabby to load a rebuilt bundle — it reads plugins once at startup.

npm run check is worth running before you trust a template change: the template is an inline string that Angular compiles at runtime, so webpack will bundle a broken binding without complaint and the pane just renders blank.

Known gaps

• delete is permanent, and can't be made recoverable here — asbutler unlinks the file and the JSON row exposes no path, which also rules out reveal-in-Finder entirely
• no TabRecoveryProvider, so the pane doesn't survive a restart (and recoverTabs is off in this config anyway)
• switching directory still costs a fresh ~1s asbutler subprocess; the pane makes that legible rather than faster, since querying more widely is the wrong fix

Managing sessions across directories is deliberately not here — that's what asbutler webui is for. This pane only ever deals with the focused terminal's directory.

Note the 2s cwd poll is not a gap: focusChanged$ alone misses a plain cd, which Tabby emits no event for. Removing it leaves the directory silently stale.