Agent Status & Sessions

Vertical Tabs shows real-time status indicators, attention dots, and session resume for agents running across tabs.

Status indicators

Each agent tab shows a real-time status icon in the sidebar.

Idle

No icon is shown. The agent is waiting for input or has not started yet.

Working

An animated spinner appears next to the tab name. The agent is actively running, reading files, writing code, or executing commands.

Permission needed

A shield icon with an orange dot indicates the agent is paused and waiting for approval. Switch to that tab to review the action and approve or reject it.

Note

This only applies to agents running in Default mode. Agents in Unrestricted mode skip permission requests entirely.

Review ready

A checkmark icon with a blue dot means the agent has finished and is ready for review.

Attention dots

Orange and blue dots appear on tabs that need your attention:

• Orange dot - the agent needs your permission to continue
• Blue dot - the agent is done and ready for your review

Dots clear automatically when switching to that tab.

The sidebar shows which tabs need attention from a single view.

Agent icon

When Vertical Tabs detects an AI agent running in a tab, the agent’s icon appears in the top bar next to the tab name.

Session resume

If Vertical Tabs is closed while agents are running, sessions are preserved.

When you reopen the app, tabs with previous agent sessions show a resume screen with two options:

• Resume - pick up where the session left off. The agent restarts with its previous context and session history.
• Cancel - dismiss the resume screen and start a regular terminal tab.

This works for any agent that supports session persistence.

Canceling resume

Tip

Canceling the resume screen converts the tab to a regular terminal. To retry, close the tab and reopen the app, or launch the agent manually with its resume flag (e.g. claude --resume <session-id>).

Running multiple agents

There is no limit to how many agents run at once. Launch as many as needed across different tabs and workspaces.

Note

Each agent runs in its own terminal, and your operating system has a finite number of PTY devices available. If you run a large number of terminals simultaneously, you may hit the system limit. See Known & Common Errors for how to raise it.

The sidebar shows the status of all agents at once:

• See which agents are working, waiting, or finished
• Spot permission requests with orange attention dots
• Jump to any agent tab with a single click

Notification bell

The bell icon in the top bar provides a centralized feed of agent status changes. Click the bell to see recent events and jump to the relevant tab.

A small blue dot appears on the bell when there are unread notifications.

What triggers a notification

• Agent finished - the agent completed its work and is ready for review
• Permission needed - the agent is blocked and waiting for your approval

Agent start events do not create notifications.

Reading notifications

Click the bell to open the dropdown. Each notification shows:

• The tab name and workspace it belongs to
• Whether the agent finished or needs input
• A relative timestamp (e.g. “3m ago”)

Unread notifications have a blue left border. Read notifications have no border.

Actions

• Click a notification to navigate to that tab and mark it as read
• Mark all as read using the checkmark button in the header
• Clear all using the X button in the header

Limits

Notifications are session-only and not persisted across app restarts. The list caps at 50 entries. The oldest notification is removed when a new one exceeds the limit.

Practical patterns

• Run the same task with different agents to compare approaches
• Split a large project across multiple agents, each handling a different part
• Keep a “helper” agent in one tab for questions while another agent builds features

Each agent runs independently in its own tab. They do not interfere with each other.