Team agents in tmux panes start in interactive mode instead of autonomous agent mode
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Feb 5, 2026 by sbruhat Closed Feb 5, 2026
Bug Description
When spawning team agents via the Task tool with team_name parameter, Claude Code correctly opens tmux panes and launches new instances with agent flags, but the agents start in interactive mode (showing ❯ prompt) instead of consuming their inbox messages and running autonomously.
Steps to Reproduce
- Create a team with
Teammatetool (spawnTeam) - Create tasks with
TaskCreate - Spawn agents with
Tasktool usingteam_nameandnameparameters - Observe the tmux panes
Expected Behavior
Agents should automatically read their inbox messages and start executing their assigned tasks in autonomous mode.
Actual Behavior
- Tmux panes open correctly
- Claude Code instances launch with correct flags (
--agent-id,--agent-name,--team-name,--parent-session-id,--agent-type, etc.) - Agents start in interactive mode showing the
❯prompt (e.g.,❯ Try "edit page.tsx to...") - They never transition to autonomous agent mode
- Inbox messages remain
read: false tmux send-keyscan display text in the pane but Claude Code does not process it
Example Command Launched in Tmux Pane
cd /path/to/project && CLAUDECODE=1 /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/claude-code/2.1.32/claude \
--agent-id agent-backend@tmux-test \
--agent-name agent-backend \
--team-name tmux-test \
--agent-color blue \
--parent-session-id <session-id> \
--agent-type general-purpose \
--dangerously-skip-permissions \
--model haiku
Observations
- Tested with both
general-purposeandBashagent types — same behavior - Tested with
haikumodel SendMessagesuccessfully writes to inbox files, but agents don't poll themshutdown_requestmessages are also ignoredtmux send-keys+Enterdisplays text in the pane but the input is not processed by Claude Code's interactive prompt
Environment
- Claude Code version: 2.1.32
- Platform: macOS (Darwin 25.2.0, arm64)
- Node.js: v25.2.1
- tmux: installed via Homebrew
- Shell: zsh
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