Panes and Surfaces

# inspect
cmux list-panes
cmux list-pane-surfaces --pane pane:1

# create
cmux new-split right --panel pane:1
cmux new-split down --command "npm run dev"
cmux new-pane --type terminal --direction right --command "tail -f logs/dev.log"
cmux new-surface --type terminal --pane pane:1
cmux new-surface --type terminal --pane pane:1 --working-directory "$PWD" --command "npm test"
cmux new-surface --type browser --pane pane:1 --url https://example.com

# focus and close
cmux focus-pane --pane pane:2
cmux focus-panel --panel surface:7
cmux close-surface --surface surface:7

# move and reorder
cmux move-surface --surface surface:7 --pane pane:2 --focus true
cmux move-surface --surface surface:7 --workspace workspace:2 --window window:1 --after surface:4
cmux split-off --surface surface:7 right
cmux reorder-surface --surface surface:7 --before surface:3

Surface identity is stable across move, reorder, and split-off. Layout commands are focus-neutral by default; pass --focus true only when the moved or created surface should be selected.

Initial command

--command <text> on new-split, new-pane, new-surface, and new-workspace starts the new terminal's regular interactive shell and types the text plus one Enter into it at spawn time. Use it instead of create-then-send-then-send-key enter whenever the first command is known.

• The text is delivered literally; quoting, &&, pipes, and $VARS are interpreted by the new shell. --command=<text> also works, and a value is required.
• The shell stays alive after the command exits. This differs from the socket initial_command param, which replaces the shell with a one-shot process.
• Terminal-only: combining it with --type browser, simulator, or agent-session is an error. Blank or whitespace-only text is ignored. new-workspace --layout ignores it; layout surfaces define their own commands.
• Remote tmux mirrored workspaces reject it, so the request fails instead of silently dropping the command.
• Socket: the same behavior is the initial_input param on surface.split, pane.create, surface.create, and workspace.create. It is delivered raw, so append the Enter keystroke (\r) yourself.