Ghostty: no per-tab TTY/PID — missing cross-reference and TTY switch fallback

[grimmerk]

Summary

Ghostty and cmux lacks per-tab TTY/PID in their APIs, which prevents two capabilities that iTerm2 has:

1. Detection cross-reference — for bare claude or claude -r sessions with in-session /rename, iTerm2 can match PID → TTY → tab name → custom title → session ID. Ghostty/cmux cannot do this, so the purple dot may be on the wrong session.

2. Switch TTY fallback — for -r <uuid> sessions without /rename, iTerm2 can use TTY matching to switch to the correct tab even without a custom title. Ghostty/cmux fall back to cwd matching which may switch to the wrong tab.

What's needed

Either per-tab TTY or PID exposed via the terminal's API (AppleScript or CLI). Either one enables cross-referencing with claude process TTYs (ps -o tty=).

Upstream tracking

Terminal	Item	Status	Impact
Ghostty	Issue #11592 — Add pid/tty to AppleScript terminal class	Open	Would enable both cross-reference and TTY switch fallback
Ghostty	PR #11354 & PR #11922— Expose PID/TTY on TerminalEntity	Open	Implementation in progress
cmux	PR #2040(released)	—	Could expose per-surface TTY via CLI (list-pane-surfaces or similar)

Current workaround

Users should use claude -n "name" or /rename + exit + resume for same-cwd sessions on Ghostty/cmux. See README and design doc for the full accuracy matrix.

Related

• Detection layer: purple dot mapped to wrong session for same-cwd sessions #60 — Detection layer purple dot issue (fixed for most cases, iTerm2 cross-reference in PR feat: iTerm2 cross-reference for detection layer (purple dot) #62)
• PR fix: three-layer iTerm2 switch + custom title encoding + grep precision #56 — iTerm2 three-layer switch matching
• PR fix: detection regex matches -r for correct purple dot #61 — Detection regex fix + title disambiguation

🤖 On behalf of @grimmerk — generated with Claude Code

[grimmerk]

Update: cmux per-surface TTY is now supported via manaflow-ai/cmux#2040 (merged). CodeV cmux cross-reference detection implemented in PR #64 (merged).

Remaining: Ghostty still lacks per-tab TTY/PID — pending upstream ghostty#11592.

Note: With the discovery of ~/.claude/sessions/ (#65), cross-reference may become unnecessary for detection — sessions/<PID>.json provides direct PID→sessionId mapping. Cross-reference would still be needed for switch layer TTY matching on Ghostty (once TTY is available upstream).

🤖 On behalf of @grimmerk — generated with Claude Code

[grimmerk]

Update: cmux now has three-layer switch matching (title → TTY → cwd), same as iTerm2. PR #69.

Remaining: Ghostty still lacks per-tab TTY — pending ghostty#11354. When Ghostty adds TTY/PID support, the changes needed in CodeV are:

1. Add TTY switch layer to openSessionInGhostty (same pattern as iTerm2/cmux — ps -o tty= → match against Ghostty tab TTYs)
2. Ghostty cross-ref in crossRefDisambiguate already has a placeholder (byTerminal['ghostty'] → cwd fallback) — replace with TTY matching

Both are small changes once upstream support lands.

🤖 On behalf of @grimmerk — generated with Claude Code