Getting Started

Prerequisites

• A supported terminal — either:
  • Tabby (recommended) with the tabby-cctabs plugin installed. Stays responsive with many open tabs and is faster on tab creation and scrollback reads, which matters once Claude is orchestrating 10+ sessions.
  • Wave Terminal.
  • Both terminals support macOS, Linux, and Windows. cctabs is actively tested on macOS. Wave didn't work in one Ubuntu test; Tabby on Linux/Windows hasn't been tried yet but its plugin format is portable, so it might Just Work. If you hit issues on another platform or want a new terminal supported, point Claude Code at the repo, share the error, and ask it to investigate + open a PR — the backend interface is small (TerminalAdapter).
• Claude Code — claude on your PATH
• Node.js ≥ 20

One-time setup (Tabby): install the cctabs plugin from Tabby → Settings → Plugins (search "cctabs"), or sideload the dev build (see tabby-plugin/README.md).

One-time setup (Wave): Wave Terminal needs Accessibility permission to open new tabs:

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → Wave Terminal ✓

Install

As a Claude Code plugin (recommended)

The plugin installs both the cctabs CLI and the Claude Code skill in one step. Run these slash commands inside a Claude Code session:

❯ /plugin marketplace add generativereality/plugins
  ⎿  Successfully added marketplace: generativereality

❯ /plugin install cctabs@generativereality
  ⎿  ✓ Installed cctabs. Run /reload-plugins to activate.

❯ /reload-plugins
  ⎿  Reloaded: 1 plugin · 0 skills · 5 agents · 0 hooks · 0 plugin MCP servers · 0 plugin LSP servers

Note: These are Claude Code slash commands, not shell commands. Type them at the ❯ prompt inside a Claude Code session.

Via npm (CLI only)

This installs the cctabs CLI but does not include the Claude Code skill:

npm install -g cctabs

Verify:

cctabs --version

First session

From inside Tabby (with the cctabs plugin running) or Wave Terminal:

cctabs sessions

This shows all open tabs and whether they have active Claude Code sessions.

Open a new session:

cctabs new myproject ~/Dev/myproject

cctabs will:

1. Open a new terminal tab (Tabby or Wave — whichever you're running in)
2. Rename it to myproject
3. cd to ~/Dev/myproject
4. Launch claude --name myproject

The tab title and Claude session name are in sync from the start.

Add the Claude Code skill

If you installed via the plugin method above, the skill is already included — no extra steps needed.

If you installed via npm and want to add the skill separately:

mkdir -p .claude/skills/cctabs
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/generativereality/cctabs/main/skills/cctabs/SKILL.md \
  -o .claude/skills/cctabs/SKILL.md

With the skill installed, Claude Code can call cctabs sessions, cctabs new, cctabs fork, and more to orchestrate parallel work autonomously.