ift and sessions

ift is the app’s command-line side. Run from inside a card, it acts on the canvas; run from any terminal, it reaches the running app over its socket.

Opening things

ift                    # launch infiniterm, or focus it if running
ift ~/Code/project     # an editor card with a file tree rooted there
ift src/main.rs        # an editor card on the file
ift src/main.rs:42     # ...at line 42 (file:42:7 for a column)
ift diff               # changes against git HEAD, as a card
ift diff src/          # only under a path

A path beats a verb: a directory called ls in front of you opens the directory.

Naming and grouping the card you are in

ift name "api server"
ift group backend      # creates the group if needed

Listing

ift ls                 # cards: id, group, directory, state, remote, number
ift commands           # every command: id, label, key
ift omni rust          # what the address bar would show for "rust"

On a terminal these print a padded table. Into a pipe they print tab-separated rows without a header, so ift ls | cut -f1 works.

Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 infiniterm is not running, 2 bad usage.

Sessions that outlive the window

Each terminal card’s shell runs under its own small daemon, iftd, which holds the pty. Quitting the app leaves your shells running; reopening it replays what they printed into the same emulator, byte for byte, so a Claude Code session comes back as it was. This is the default backend (terminal.backend: "daemon").

A daemon keeps the last 4 MiB of output (terminal.sessionBuffer) and writes it to disk every two seconds while output arrives. After a power cut or a reboot, the card replays that above a fresh shell with a [session lost] line, and a card that ran Claude has claude --resume <id> in its history: Up, Enter.

Nothing keeps a process alive across a reboot.

Reaching a shell from elsewhere

ift sessions           # card number and label for each running session
ift sessions --full    # every column: id, pid, cwd, command, started, card, label
ift attach 7           # this terminal becomes card #7's shell

ift attach takes the card’s number (the #7 on its label), which survives a reboot; the session id does not. It works whether the app is running or not, so you can reach a card over ssh from your phone.

A session has one client at a time. Attaching takes it from the app: the card shows a banner and ignores keys until you detach with Ctrl \, then the app takes it back within a second.

tmux

terminal.backend: "tmux" puts each card in a tmux window in a session named infiniterm instead, reachable with tmux attach -t infiniterm. It is not the default: tmux is a second terminal emulator in the path and it corrupted Claude Code’s redraws in ways the daemon does not. "pty" gives plain shells that end when the app quits.