Inspect live agents

The Live panel shows running coding-agent processes and their subprocess trees. Open it with Tab or Shift-Tab, then use j/k, the arrow keys, Page Up, or Page Down to move through the tree; g/G jump to the first/last process. The selected process shows its PID, parent PID, state, executable, and redacted command preview.

Platform support

Live process discovery requires Linux /proc. On macOS and Windows the rest of txtop works normally, but the Live panel displays an explicit unsupported message instead of process data.

Built-in agents

txtop recognizes these executable names by default:

• Claude Code: claude
• Codex: codex
• Aider: aider

Matched agent processes become roots; their descendants are included even when the child executables are not agents themselves.

Customize matching

Create agents.toml next to config.toml in txtop’s platform config directory. Entries with a built-in id replace that built-in definition; new IDs add agents.

[[agent]]
id = "my-agent"
display_name = "My Agent"
icon_text = "MA"
argv0_exact = "my-agent"

[[agent]]
id = "wrapped-codex"
display_name = "Wrapped Codex"
cmdline_regex = "(^|/)wrapper .*codex"

Each entry needs at least one matcher:

• argv0_exact or argv0_regex
• comm_exact or comm_regex
• cmdline_regex
• cwd_regex

All matchers in one entry must match. Invalid registry files are reported in the Live panel and the embedded defaults remain available.

Command previews pass through txtop’s normal diagnostic redaction, but process arguments can still contain sensitive context. Treat screenshots and terminal recordings as potentially sensitive.