Running Claude Code in StreamView

StreamView was built for running several AI coding sessions at once. Each pane is a real Windows terminal, so Claude Code behaves exactly as it does anywhere else. StreamView adds the parts that get hard once you're running more than one: seeing them all, knowing which one wants you, getting images in, and closing down without losing the thread.

Nothing here requires setup, an account, or an integration. Start a Claude Code pane and it works.

Start a session

1. Click Claude, Cursor, or Grok on the Welcome screen, or + Add Stream and pick the matching template — or create your own with whatever command you use.
2. Select a folder — the repository the agent will run in. Recent repos sit on top after the first one. The pane is named after the folder.
3. Repeat for as many projects as you're working across (Ctrl+N → the same agent → a different folder), and group them into a workspace.

A saved template that already has a working directory skips the picker. For Cursor, picking a folder also adds --trust so the CLI doesn't ask about a directory you just chose. It does not skip permission prompts.

Save & Close, Resume, and automatic checkpoints are Claude Code only — they use a LEFT-OFF prompt the other CLIs don't speak. Cursor and Grok still get a real terminal pane and the folder picker.

The built-in Claude command is claude. Skipping permission prompts is a checkbox in the stream editor, off by default, with a warning if you turn it on.

The Claude Code template records Input Only by design — see Recording modes for why, and how to change it.

The status bar shows an estimate of tokens used in AI panes today, read from the badge each CLI already prints ((↓ 856 tokens)). StreamView does not bill tokens.

Two agents, one folder

Point Claude and Cursor at the same repository. On the Cursor pane, tick Read-only (review mode) in the stream editor (--mode ask). Cursor can analyse and report; it cannot change files. That's the "Claude writes, Cursor reviews" setup without a second checkout.

A typical four-pane grid:

• Claude — the folder you're changing
• Cursor — the same folder, read-only
• Grok — a different repo, its own colour
• api log — Tail File on the service log they're about to ask you about

See Managing streams for the Cursor checkboxes. Welcome adds --trust for the folder you just picked; it does not turn on skip-permissions.

Know which session went quiet

Running four sessions is only useful if you can tell which ones are still working.

• A pane's status dot — and the matching dot on its stream tab — is green while it is producing output, yellow once output has been quiet for a stretch (30 seconds by default, configurable in Settings → General), and gray when the process is stopped. For an AI session yellow usually means it has finished, or it's asking you something. It is a silence timer, not a prompt detector — a long think with no printed output looks idle too.
• Orange means it's waiting on you. When you send a session something, it works, and then goes quiet while you're looking at a different pane (or another app), its dot turns orange. The workspace tab shows how many are waiting, the window title shows the total ((2) StreamView), and the taskbar button flashes if StreamView is in the background. Clicking into the pane clears it.
• The status bar shows the split at a glance: 2 active, 3 idle.
• Ctrl+Tab jumps to the next pane waiting on you first; when none are waiting it moves to the next pane that's still working. Ctrl+Shift+Tab goes back.
• The expand button on the pane header (or Ctrl+Shift+F11) takes the pane you're reading to fullscreen, then returns you to your layout. Bare F11 goes to Claude, not to StreamView.

Paste screenshots straight in

AI coding tools read images by file path, which normally means: screenshot, save, find the file, type the path.

Copy any image to the clipboard, focus a pane, and press Ctrl+Shift+V (or click the camera in the pane header). StreamView saves the image and types its path into the session. See Screenshot paste.

Move text between sessions

Select an error, a stack trace, or a snippet in one pane, right-click, and choose Send to… to drop it into another session's prompt. It's pasted, not executed — you still press Enter yourself.

Save & Close: don't lose your context

The Save & Close button (top right) is how you shut down at the end of the day.

1. Every open Claude pane is asked to print a short summary of where it got to: what it was doing, what's unfinished, the single next step, and anything waiting on a decision from you.
2. StreamView reads that off the terminal and stores it in your local session history.
3. A dialog shows each pane's progress — a spinner while it writes, a green tick when its summary is saved. Close StreamView unlocks when every pane has reported in.
4. In a hurry, or already saved another way? Close now (skip save) is always available.

Panes that aren't running are skipped. If a pane answers without printing a summary, the dialog says so plainly — you lose the summary, not your work.

The close guard

Closing StreamView stops every terminal, which ends every Claude session running in a pane. The title-bar X sits a few pixels from the maximise button, so StreamView asks first: while any stream is running, closing the window (X, Alt+F4, or the taskbar) opens a prompt listing what is still live, with three ways out.

• Keep working — cancels the close. This is the default button, so Enter and Esc both land here rather than on something destructive.
• Save & Close — runs the Save & Close flow above, then shuts down.
• Close without saving — stops everything immediately.

With no Claude pane open there's nothing to save, so the prompt collapses to a plain confirm. With nothing running at all it doesn't appear — an empty StreamView still closes in one click. Turn it off under Settings > General > Shutdown.

If you already closed by accident: your Claude Code conversations are not gone. Claude Code writes each conversation to disk as it goes, independently of StreamView. Start the pane again and run claude --continue in the same working directory to pick up the most recent conversation, or claude --resume to choose from a list.

Automatic checkpoints

Save & Close only runs when you deliberately close StreamView. Leave it open for days — which is the normal way to use it — and nothing gets written at all, so there is nothing for the Resume banner to show and a crash costs you the lot.

Session Checkpoints (Settings > Data > Session Checkpoints) can ask on a timer instead. It is off on a fresh install. When on, the default is daily, and only if that pane actually did work since yesterday — a session waiting on your next prompt is not asked again until something new happens. Turn it on if you want crash-time summaries without using Save & Close.

When it is on:

• Idle panes only. A pane that's mid-task is never interrupted. Idle means output has been quiet for the timeout (a long silent think looks idle too).
• Only if it did work since yesterday. A pane quiet since before yesterday is skipped.
• At most once per cadence. Daily is the default (once per local calendar day). You can pick every 2 hours / hour / 30 minutes in the same settings page.
• One at a time, so several agents never start working at once.

Each checkpoint costs a short round-trip per idle pane. Change or turn it off under Settings > Data > Session Checkpoints.

Resume where you left off

Next launch, any Claude pane with a saved summary shows a Resume banner at the top of the pane with a one-line reminder of what you were doing.

• Resume feeds the summary back to Claude and asks it to re-orient and wait for you — it won't start work on its own.
• Show details expands the full summary first.
• Dismiss hides the banner for that session.

Tips

• Give each project's pane a distinct accent colour in its template — with four panes on screen, colour is how you find the right one without reading.
• Keep the noisy, long-running processes (dev servers, log tails) in a Rows layout workspace, and the AI sessions in a Grid workspace. Switching workspaces is view-only and won't restart anything.
• The recent-output button in the pane header copies text that has scrolled above the visible area — useful for handing a long error back to another session.
• If Claude writes a lot while you're on another tab, a catch-up pill appears when you come back (N new lines · click to read from here). It opens a panel of the new text rather than scrolling the TUI; the live prompt stays put so you can see whether it's waiting on you. See Keyboard shortcuts.

Related

• Screenshot paste
• Recording modes
• Session history
• Workspaces
• Keyboard shortcuts