Agent of Empires (aoe)

Overview

aoe creates, manages, and monitors AI coding agent sessions (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and others) inside tmux. Each session is an agent process with an ID, title, tool, project path, and live status. Use aoe instead of raw tmux commands whenever the work is about coding agents: it tracks status, captures output, manages git worktrees for parallel branches, and organizes sessions into groups and profiles.

When to Use

• Launching one or more AI coding agents on project directories.
• Monitoring agent progress (waiting vs running vs idle).
• Capturing agent output for review.
• Organizing agents into groups or profiles.
• Setting up parallel worktree-based development.

Don't use for: general tmux window/pane management unrelated to coding agents.

Requirements

The aoe and tmux binaries must be on PATH, and commands run through a shell. Install aoe from https://github.com/agent-of-empires/agent-of-empires.

Core Concepts

• Session: An agent process running in a tmux session. Each has an ID, title, tool (e.g. claude), and project path.
• Group: A named folder for organizing sessions (supports nesting with /, e.g. backend/api).
• Profile: A separate workspace with its own sessions and config. Use -p <name> globally or set AGENT_OF_EMPIRES_PROFILE.
• Status: One of running, waiting, idle, stopped, error, starting, unknown.

Adding Sessions

# Add a session for the current directory
aoe add . -t "my feature"

# Add with group, launch immediately
aoe add /path/to/repo -t "API work" -g backend -l

# Add with specific tool
aoe add . -t "codex session" -c codex

# Add in a git worktree on a new branch, YOLO mode (omit -b to check out an existing branch)
aoe add . -t "fix-123" -w fix/issue-123 -b -y -l

# Base the new branch on another branch instead of the default
aoe add . -t "fix-124" -w fix/issue-124 -b --base-branch fix/issue-123 -l

# Add in Docker sandbox
aoe add . -t "sandboxed" -s -l

# Add as sub-session of another
aoe add . -t "sub task" -P <parent-id>

# Enable YOLO mode (skip permission prompts)
aoe add . -t "yolo" -y -l

Without --base-branch, -w <branch> -b starts the branch from worktree.default_base_branch if set, otherwise from the repo's detected default branch (chosen among each remote's HEAD target and main/master), fetched first. It is not the branch checked out where you run aoe add, so pass --base-branch to build on a feature branch.

A sandboxed session (-s) sees only its mounts: the project, its agent store and credentials, ~/.gitconfig, and configured extra_volumes. Work that needs host-only resources (macOS Keychain, launchd, the aoe app directory, other paths outside the project) must run without -s. See the sandbox guide.

Listing Sessions

aoe list              # human-readable
aoe list --json       # JSON for parsing
aoe list --all        # across all profiles
aoe list --json --state=live   # skip trashed and archived rows

JSON shape (aoe list --json):

[
  {
    "id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
    "title": "my feature",
    "path": "/home/user/project",
    "group": "backend",
    "tool": "claude",
    "command": "claude",
    "profile": "default",
    "state": "live",
    "created_at": "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "workspace_repos": []
  }
]

command is omitted when empty; worktree appears only for worktree-backed sessions. state is live, archived, or trashed; trashed_at and archived_at are set independently, and trashing leaves archived_at alone, so a session archived and then trashed carries both keys and reports trashed. Neither timestamp is durable, but they do not clear alike: archived_at is cleared by aoe session unarchive, by aoe session favorite, and by anything that wakes the session (aoe send, and aoe session restart when it sends its wake message), while trashed_at is cleared only by aoe session restore. Key off state rather than caching a timestamp. A trashed session stays in the listing and keeps its title, so check state before treating a row as a live session. list --json does not include live status: use aoe status --json or aoe session capture --json for that.

snoozed_until and pinned_at round out the four state timestamps the REST API exposes: pinned_at appears whenever the session is pinned for the web sidebar, while snoozed_until appears only while the snooze is still active (the API's own gate), so an expired deadline omits the key instead of advertising a snooze that already ended. Both are independent of state, and neither key appears on a row carrying neither marker. snoozed_until also clears readily, more often than its siblings: waking the session (aoe send), archiving, favoriting, unsnoozing, or pinning all remove it on the next read, so treat a missing key as no active snooze rather than a listing gap.

Session Lifecycle

aoe session start <id-or-title>
aoe session stop <id-or-title>
aoe session restart <id-or-title>
aoe session attach <id-or-title>   # interactive attach

Inspecting Sessions

# Session metadata
aoe session show <id-or-title> --json

# Capture tmux pane content (key for monitoring)
aoe session capture <id-or-title> --json
aoe session capture <id-or-title> -n 100 --strip-ansi
aoe session capture <id-or-title>   # plain text, good for piping

# Quick status summary
aoe status --json
aoe status -q   # just the waiting count (for scripting)

-n has no cap, but capture only reaches back as far as tmux scrollback (history-limit, 2000 lines by default), and agent TUIs that redraw the screen leave little of a long turn in it. For a long report, ask the agent to write it to a file in its worktree and read that file from the host (path in aoe session show --json).

JSON shape (aoe session capture --json):

{
  "id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "title": "my feature",
  "status": "waiting",
  "tool": "claude",
  "content": "... pane text ...",
  "lines": 50
}

JSON shape (aoe session show --json):

{
  "id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "title": "my feature",
  "path": "/home/user/project",
  "group": "backend",
  "tool": "claude",
  "command": "claude",
  "status": "running",
  "state": "live",
  "profile": "default"
}

parent_session_id is included only for sub-sessions. state is live, archived, or trashed, the same vocabulary aoe list --json uses; trashed_at and archived_at are set independently, and trashing deliberately leaves archived_at alone, so a session archived and then trashed carries both keys and reports trashed. Neither timestamp is durable, and they do not clear alike: archived_at is cleared by aoe session unarchive, by aoe session favorite, and by anything that wakes the session, which means aoe send and aoe session restart when it sends its wake message (with session.restart_wake_message set to the empty string it does not send one, and the archive survives the restart). trashed_at is cleared only by aoe session restore. Read the current state rather than caching a timestamp; status is the pane's live status and does not carry it, since an archived session can still be running.

The same two keys apply here as in aoe list --json: pinned_at whenever the session is pinned for the web sidebar, snoozed_until only while the snooze is still active.

JSON shape (aoe status --json):

{
  "waiting": 1,
  "running": 2,
  "idle": 1,
  "stopped": 1,
  "error": 0,
  "total": 5
}

Auto-detection (inside a tmux pane)

When called from within an aoe-managed tmux session, the identifier can be omitted:

aoe session show          # auto-detects current session
aoe session capture       # auto-detects current session
aoe session current --json

Sending messages

aoe send <id-or-title> "message"
aoe send <id-or-title> "message" --no-revive   # fail instead of starting a stopped session

aoe send starts a stopped session unless --no-revive is given, waits at most 5 seconds for the agent to look ready, then sends anyway. A message that arrives before the agent's prompt is up is lost or left unsubmitted, so after launching, poll capture until the agent is ready instead of sleeping a fixed time. status also reads idle for a blank or unrecognized screen, such as the pane before Claude Code draws, so for Claude Code in any permission mode also require its ❯ input line. Send only after both were observed; on a capture error or deadline, stop without sending:

ready=
for _ in $(seq 60); do
  out=$(aoe session capture "fix-123" --json --strip-ansi) || { echo "capture failed" >&2; exit 1; }
  st=$(printf '%s\n' "$out" | jq -er .status) || { echo "unreadable capture" >&2; exit 1; }
  if [ "$st" = idle ] && printf '%s\n' "$out" | jq -r .content | grep -q '^[[:space:]]*❯'; then
    ready=1; break
  fi
  sleep 2
done
[ -n "$ready" ] || { echo "fix-123 not ready after 120s" >&2; exit 1; }
aoe send "fix-123" "Fix issue #123 and open a PR"

After sending, confirm the agent picked it up (status running, or the message in the transcript) before assuming delivery. Messages of 16 bytes or more, or with a newline, are pasted (bracketed when the agent enables it) and followed by Enter, and an agent may show them collapsed (Claude Code renders [Pasted text #1 ...]). Claude Code's input box can also show a dimmed suggested next prompt that looks like typed text; it was not submitted. Only text in the transcript above the input box has been sent.

Renaming and Organizing

aoe session rename <id> -t "new title"
aoe session rename <id> -g "new/group"

aoe group create mygroup
aoe group move <id-or-title> mygroup
aoe group list --json
aoe group delete mygroup --force

Profiles

aoe profile list
aoe profile create staging
aoe profile delete staging
aoe profile default staging   # set default
aoe -p staging list           # use inline

Worktrees

aoe worktree list
aoe worktree info <id-or-title>
aoe worktree cleanup -f

Removing Sessions

aoe remove <id-or-title>                    # move to trash (alias: rm)
aoe session restore <id-or-title>           # bring it back
aoe remove <id-or-title> --purge --delete-worktree --force   # delete permanently

With session.delete_to_trash on (the default), aoe remove stops the agent, keeps the record with state trashed, and moves an aoe-managed worktree into a .aoe-trash/<id> directory beside it. --delete-worktree, --delete-branch, and --keep-container only apply with --purge. For sandboxed sessions the move can fail (for example with Permission denied); aoe then prints left worktree in place and still trashes the session.

Workflow Patterns

Single agent

aoe add /path/to/repo -t "feature X" -l
# ... wait ...
aoe session capture "feature X" --json

Parallel worktree agents

aoe add . -t "issue-100" -w fix/issue-100 -b -l
aoe add . -t "issue-101" -w fix/issue-101 -b -l
aoe add . -t "issue-102" -w fix/issue-102 -b -l
aoe status --json   # check all at once

Monitoring loop

Poll all sessions until none are running or waiting:

while true; do
  status=$(aoe status --json)
  waiting=$(echo "$status" | jq '.waiting')
  running=$(echo "$status" | jq '.running')
  if [ "$running" -eq 0 ] && [ "$waiting" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "All agents finished"
    break
  fi
  echo "Running: $running, Waiting: $waiting"
  sleep 30
done

Capture and review

for id in $(aoe list --json | jq -r '.[].id'); do
  echo "=== $id ==="
  aoe session capture "$id" -n 100 --strip-ansi
  echo
done

Common Pitfalls

1. Expecting aoe list --json to carry live status. It does not. The fields are static session metadata (path, group, tool, command, etc.). For status, call aoe status --json or aoe session capture --json.
2. Using raw tmux to start or stop agents. That bypasses aoe's tracking; the session's status and metadata go stale. Always use aoe session start/stop/restart.
3. Forgetting -l/--launch. aoe add creates a session but does not start it unless you pass -l.
4. Running across the wrong profile. Sessions are profile-scoped; use -p <name> or set AGENT_OF_EMPIRES_PROFILE when scripting, and aoe list --all to see everything.
5. Sending before the agent is ready. Poll capture until status is idle with the input line on screen, abort on timeout, and confirm the agent started working afterwards. See Sending messages.

Verification Checklist

• aoe and tmux are on PATH.
• aoe add was followed by a launch (-l) or an explicit aoe session start.
• JSON parsing reads path/group (not project_path/group_path) and gets status from aoe status/aoe session capture, not aoe list.
• Scripted polling exits when both running and waiting reach 0.