Terminal on Nick Liu - Software Engineer

Make tmux Show What Each Window Is Doing

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you use tmux, you've hit this: ten windows open and they're all named `zsh` or `node`. Which one had your AI agent running? No idea. Let's make tmux label windows usefully.

🧪 Tested with Claude Code 2.1.x · macOS / Linux

New to tmux? It’s a “terminal multiplexer”: it splits one terminal into many windows and panes that survive disconnects. The only vocabulary you need here: a window is like a browser tab inside tmux; the bar at the bottom lists them. The prefix is the key you press before a tmux command, commonly Ctrl+b (mine is Ctrl+a).

Why everything is named `zsh`
#

By default tmux has a setting called automatic-rename turned on. It renames each window after whatever program is running in it. A shell? zsh. A Node program (like Claude Code)? node. Helpful in theory, useless when everything collapses to the same word.

Stop Losing Your Claude Code Conversations

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You're deep in a great Claude Code conversation. You close the terminal. The next day you want to pick up where you left off… and you can't find it. Sound familiar? Let's fix that.

🧪 Tested with Claude Code 2.1.x · macOS / Linux

What is a “session,” and where does it go?
#

Every time you run claude, you start a session, one conversation, with its full history. When you quit, that history doesn’t vanish. Claude Code saves it to disk, organized per project folder, here:

Catppuccin Mocha: Why I Theme Everything the Same Color

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Your development environment should feel like **one cohesive tool**, not a collection of unrelated windows with clashing colors. I theme everything with the same palette: Catppuccin Mocha . The result is a workspace where context-switching between tools is effortless.

Why One Palette Everywhere?
#

Most developers pick a theme for their editor and call it a day. Their terminal is one color, their editor another, their tmux status bar a third, and their Git diffs something else entirely. Every time they switch contexts, their brain spends a fraction of a second recalibrating.

My Terminal Setup in 2026: Ghostty, tmux, and Neovim

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After years of refining my terminal workflow, I've landed on a stack I genuinely enjoy using every day: **Ghostty** as the terminal emulator, **tmux** with **sesh** for session management, and **Neovim** with **LazyVim** for editing.

Everything runs on macOS (Apple Silicon) with a consistent Catppuccin Mocha theme across all tools.

Modern CLI Tools That Replaced My Unix Classics

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I've been gradually replacing classic Unix tools with modern alternatives, mostly written in Rust . After a year of daily use, these aren't experiments anymore. They're muscle memory.

The Replacements
#

Classic	Modern	Why
`cat`	bat	Syntax highlighting, line numbers, git integration
`ls`	eza	Icons, git status, tree view, color-coded
`grep`	ripgrep	10x faster, respects `.gitignore`, smart case
`find`	fd	Simpler syntax, respects `.gitignore`, colored output
`cd`	zoxide	Learns your habits, fuzzy matching
`sed`	sd	Intuitive regex syntax, no escaping nightmare
`du`	dust	Visual directory size with a tree view
`df`	duf	Colorful, filterable disk usage
`top`	btop	Beautiful TUI with mouse support, per-core graphs
`ps`	procs	Colorized, searchable, tree view
`history`	atuin	Encrypted sync, full-text search, workspace filtering

Setting Up Aliases
#

In my .zshrc, I alias the classics to their replacements so the transition is invisible:

Terminal on Nick Liu - Software Engineer

Make tmux Show What Each Window Is Doing

Why everything is named zsh #

Stop Losing Your Claude Code Conversations

What is a “session,” and where does it go? #