- You want a new terminal designed around agents.
- You want a browser the agent can drive, inside the terminal.
- You want to script your terminal through an API.
Grenade or cmux?
cmux is a Mac terminal built for running many agents, with vertical tabs and a ring on the one that needs you. Grenade is not a terminal: it keeps the one you have, and adds a phone and a Mac app that show every agent's status.
cmux and Grenade.
| cmux | Grenade | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A free and open-source macOS terminal built on Ghostty, with vertical tabs, split panes and notification rings | A daemon on your Mac that runs each agent in a tmux session, with apps for iPhone, Android and Mac that show them all |
| Your terminal | cmux becomes your terminal | iTerm2, Terminal or none at all: the sessions live in tmux |
| Agents | Any command-line agent: it is a terminal | Claude Code and Codex with status from their own hooks; anything else as a shell |
| On the phone | An iOS app in beta on TestFlight, with early access through the paid Founder's Edition | iPhone and Android apps |
| Reaching the Mac from outside | Your own VPN: "cmux does not provide networking out of the box", and Tailscale is recommended | Built in: an encrypted relay, or directly on your Wi‑Fi |
| Account | The iOS app needs a Mac running cmux and signed in | None. A phone is paired by scanning a QR code on the Mac |
| Also | A scriptable browser inside the terminal, a CLI and socket API, session restore | Cards for Claude Code's permissions, questions and plans; hold to talk; groups by project |
An honest pick.
Choose cmux when
Choose Grenade when
- You want to keep iTerm2 or Terminal as it is.
- You want your agents on your phone today, on Android too.
- You do not want to set up a VPN to reach your Mac.
How Grenade's pairing and encryption work, and who can read what: Security.
Where this comes from.
What this page says about cmux was read from its own pages, listed here. If something has changed since, the source is right and this page is late.