Live output tail in the /tasks (background shells) panel — inline + pop-out window
Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jul 3, 2026 by rslosberg
Summary
When a Bash command runs in the background, the running-shell indicator in the status bar and the /tasks panel it opens only show status/metadata. There's no way to watch the process's live output from within Claude Code — you have to fall back to tee-ing to a logfile and tail -f-ing it in a separate terminal. Please surface the output directly in the panel.
What I'd like
- Inline live tail — in the
/tasksslider panel, show a live-updating tail of the selected background shell's stdout/stderr (last N lines, auto-scrolling), the same stream Claude polls. - Pop-out button — a button on that panel to open the tail in its own resizable window, so a long-running server/build can be watched alongside the conversation without stealing the panel.
Why
- Background tasks (dev servers, builds, log followers) are exactly the things you want to eyeball in real time, but today the panel that already knows about them shows no output.
- The current workaround (
cmd 2>&1 | tee /tmp/run.logthentail -fin another terminal) is manual and duplicates state the app already has.
Nice-to-haves
- Persist/scrollback the buffer so you can catch up on output that scrolled past.
- Per-shell "open in external terminal" option for people who want it in their own terminal app.