Subagent iTerm pane title shows agent *type*, not the assigned --name — hard to tell parallel panes apart

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 6, 2026

What

When the main agent spawns subagents (Agent tool) in iTerm2, each renders as its own split pane. The pane's title bar shows the agent type + cwd (e.g. developer — ~/dev/myrepo, general-purpose — ~/dev/myrepo). When several subagents of the same type run in parallel (e.g. multiple developer agents on different issues), their pane title bars are identical, so you can't tell at a glance which pane is working what.

The agent's assigned name (the name given at dispatch) is visible — but only at the bottom of the pane and in the manage-list — not in the title bar.

Repro

  • Claude Code v2.1.222, iTerm2 (macOS).
  • Spawn 2+ subagents of the same type with distinct names.
  • Observe: both panes' title bars read <type> — <cwd>; the names differ only in the small footer.

What I tried

  • Setting the pane title externally via osascript (iTerm2 AppleScript set name, matched by ITERM_SESSION_ID GUID from inside the pane): the set name succeeds but Claude Code rewrites the pane title within milliseconds, so it reverts to <type> — <cwd>. So the harness owns and continuously refreshes the title; external control isn't viable.

Request

Let the subagent pane title bar reflect the agent's assigned name (or a custom label / task summary), not just the type — ideally configurable. Even "<name> · <type> — <cwd>" would make parallel panes distinguishable at a glance. Use case: long autonomous multi-agent runs where an operator wants to see which issue/story each pane is on without expanding it.

Nice-to-have

An env var or hook signal the harness reads for the pane title (e.g. a per-agent label), so orchestrators can encode an issue number.

Thanks!

View original on GitHub ↗