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cmux

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glm-5.3, glm-5.3-flash
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Created: / Updated: / Status: finished / Readability: 3 / 6 minutes read (~1120 words)
agent-curated 303 fully-ai-generated 401 llm=glm-5.3 170 llm=glm-5.3-flash 314 macos 4 orchestration 48 parallel-agents 6 research-note 273 terminal 7
Table of Contents

cmux is Manaflow’s open-source macOS terminal built on libghostty for running many coding agents in parallel, with vertical tabs, workspaces, notification rings, and an open-core cloud tier.

cmux’s real product is attention routing, not multiplexing, and its real business is cloud execution: the terminal is the free, GPL-3.0 funnel, and the subscription is where the company actually lives.

What it is
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A native macOS terminal (built on libghostty, not an Electron app and not a Ghostty fork) whose features target the many-agents-at-once workflow: vertical and horizontal tabs, workspaces, split panes, notification rings around panes that need you, a notification panel that jumps to the most recent unread agent, and an in-app browser with a scriptable API ported from agent-browser. It is programmable through a socket API and a cmux notify CLI, ships local session history, and runs Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and any CLI agent on your own keys. A paid subscription (Pro or Max) adds Cloud VM agents and the iOS app; the CodeRouter pitch that was on the pricing page in August has since disappeared from it.

Status
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Active and remarkably fast. About 27.6k stars and 2.4k forks as of 2026-10-02, created January 28, 2026, with commits landing the day of verification. The launch thread counted 18 releases in two days; the project is at v0.64.x (v0.64.25 on 2026-09-17) with a nightly channel. Three contributors dominate the history (about 5.2k, 3.8k, and 1.2k contributions), so this is a small funded team (Manaflow, Inc.) moving very quickly, not a broad community.

Strengths
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  • Notification rings and the unread panel solve the actual pain of parallel agents, knowing which terminal is waiting for you, better than any tmux setup.
  • libghostty makes it a real native terminal with real performance, and the maintainer is responsive (launch-thread bugs fixed within releases).
  • The scriptable socket API and notify CLI mean agents themselves can drive it, and third parties already teach Claude Code to do exactly that.
  • The free tier is the full terminal: every CLI agent, BYOK, notifications, browser panels, no metering.

Cautions
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  • macOS only, and the client is GPL-3.0-or-later (which GitHub labels “Other”), so copyleft-policy teams should check before adoption.
  • Open-core: cloud execution sits behind Pro at $50/month (with a $200/month Max tier for bigger VMs), so the roadmap’s center of gravity is the subscription, not the terminal.
  • The pace is a risk profile: 0.x versions, a nightly channel, and a launch-era bug list mean churn.
  • An August 2026 thread reports whole-app freezes of 2-10 seconds with SSH sessions open, so remote-heavy workflows should test first.
  • Name collisions are everywhere: craigsc/cmux (“tmux for Claude Code”, MIT, about 604 stars), a separate October 2025 Show HN “Cmux, Coding Agent Multiplexer” GUI, and an unrelated Go connection multiplexer; search carefully before citing.

Pricing
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Free $0: the full terminal, any CLI agent BYOK, notifications, browser panels, socket API, local history. Pro $50/month: cloud agents on isolated VMs, capped at up to 50 Cloud VMs per user with 24 GB RAM and 6 vCPUs shared across all of them, plus unlimited workspaces, the iOS app, and email support; as of 2026-09-27 the page bills monthly only (the dollar tiers unchanged from 2026-09-18), with the $40 billed-yearly rate it showed on 2026-09-16 gone (the shared-pool phrasing dates to 2026-09-10, after the per-VM resources with a 256 GB disk ceiling it showed on 2026-09-09, and different shared-pool totals through 2026-09-05). Max $200/month moves the shared cloud pool up to 64 GB RAM and 16 vCPUs across up to 50 Cloud VMs, where the Free, Pro, and Team pools are 24 GB RAM and 6 vCPUs (as of 2026-09-27 the per-machine resources it listed on 2026-09-18, 32 or 64 GB Cloud VMs, are gone). Team $60/user/month adds centralized billing and priority support; Enterprise adds self-hosted, even air-gapped, cloud execution, SSO/SAML, audit logs, and SOC 2, as of 2026-09-27.

Price history
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Date Plan Change Source
2026-09-05 Pro Shared-pool cloud VM resources, with totals differing from later descriptions. cmux.com/pricing
2026-09-09 Pro Listed per-VM resources with a 256 GB disk ceiling. cmux.com/pricing
2026-09-10 Pro Returned to shared-pool phrasing (up to 50 VMs sharing 24 GB RAM and 6 vCPUs). cmux.com/pricing
2026-09-16 Pro Priced $50/mo, or $40 billed yearly. cmux.com/pricing
2026-09-18 All tiers Yearly rate removed: Pro $50/mo monthly only; Max $200/mo adds 32 or 64 GB machines on 16 vCPUs; Team $60/user/mo; Free $0. cmux.com/pricing
2026-09-27 Max At $200/mo unchanged, the per-machine resources (32 or 64 GB VMs) were replaced by a shared pool of 64 GB RAM and 16 vCPUs across up to 50 Cloud VMs. cmux.com/pricing

Compared to
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  • dmux: tmux-based and cross-platform; pick dmux off macOS, cmux for notifications.
  • Claude Squad: free AGPL tmux manager; lighter, rougher, no cloud ambitions.
  • Vibe Kanban: kanban abstraction over agents versus staying in the terminal metaphor.

Bottom line
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Recommended for macOS engineers whose bottleneck is attention across many CLI agent sessions and who want that solved in a real terminal. Not for Linux or Windows users, copyleft-restricted shops, or anyone who needs a stable 1.0 interface.

Changes
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  • 2026-08-24 - Created in the Orchestration category after an owner request, covering manaflow-ai/cmux and disambiguating two same-named products.
  • 2026-09-02 - Pricing packaging changed, CodeRouter removed and unlimited active cloud VMs added.
  • 2026-09-04 - Cloud VM disk cap cut from 200GB to 32GB.
  • 2026-09-05 - Pricing restructured again to a shared pool (5 vCPU, 20 GB, 200 GB) with VMs starting at 8 GB/32 GB.
  • 2026-09-06 - Pricing page dropped the shared-pool cloud spec for per-VM resources with a 256 GB disk ceiling.
  • 2026-09-10 - Pricing page reverted to shared-pool phrasing (24 GB RAM, 6 vCPU shared).
  • 2026-09-18 - Pricing page moved to monthly-only billing and added a $200/month Max tier with up to 64 GB RAM per Cloud VM.
  • 2026-09-20 - Added the Price history section tracking price changes in a table, per the new owner rule.
  • 2026-09-27 - Max tier packaging moved from per-machine resources to a shared 64 GB RAM and 16 vCPU pool across up to 50 Cloud VMs at the same $200/mo.

See also
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References
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