Tmux command palette

Command palette for tmux, in the spirit of VS Code and other GUI software.

• Searchable menu to run commands
• Shows hotkeys to teach the faster way.

Trigger the palette via hotkey, type what you want — "new tab", "move pane", hit Enter to execute.

Installation

0. Prerequisites

• tmux 3.7+
• Systemwide python 3.11+
• fzf
• tpm

1. Edit tmux config

Add the plugin to your tmux config:

set -g @plugin 'NikolayXHD/tmux-command-palette'

Configure palette trigger hotkey after the tpm loader line, it should become:

run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'
bind -T prefix ? tmux-command-palette

Alternatevely to setup VSCode-like global trigger Ctrl + Shift + P

run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'
bind -n C-S-P tmux-command-palette

In that case you will need to make sure your terminal + tmux combo is set up to properly handle Ctrl + Shift + Key bindings.

2. Trigger plugin installation

press Prefix + I in tmux to install the plugin.

Development

Entry point: src/palette.py. The personal alias file is kept up to date automatically on every palette run; the flags run that step or the checks standalone:

• --gen — update {tmux_config_dir}/tmux-command-palette.toml: initial aliases for your custom bindings
• --check — check palette.toml is complete and current for this tmux version (every built-in command described, no stale entries), and that every alias lists the glossary synonyms of its command
• --exec table|key — run one entry's command (for testing)

Initial custom aliases {tmux_config_dir}/tmux-command-palette.toml are generated from glossary.toml:

• [[jargon]] maps tmux jargon words to synonym groups by words in the command, e.g. kill-session — terminate/exit/quit rather than close/remove/delete. The words are matched whole, in the command with quoted strings and #{...} format variables stripped out.
• [[phrase]] maps exact commands to human-readable forms, e.g. terminate current session

Customizing aliases: edit tmux-command-palette.toml next to your tmux.conf (e.g. ~/.config/tmux/tmux-command-palette.toml).

Run tests: make test

src/palette_data.py — tmux bindings layer.

src/palette_actions.py — execution of a selected entry.

src/palette_ui.py — fzf UI and line rendering.

palette.toml — common search aliases, manually maintained in this repo.

palette.generated.toml — comprehensive source to build fzf input.

tmux-command-palette.tmux — tpm entry point: registers the tmux-command-palette command via command-alias[]; the key binding is the user's.

AI disclosure

This plugin was vibecoded with Pi and deepseek-v4-flash model.