Hitch

If skill activated with no concrete task provided - don't act, just remember it. This is reference knowledge for you on how to use hitch.

hitch CLI for agents to see and control shared terminal sessions that the user already has opened.

Useful for tasks when you need to collaborate with the user in the same terminal and you both want to interact with it. Like long running tasks, dev servers, watchers, tunnels, builds. Think of it like tmux but with proper agent tools.

Command Reference

hitch context [TERMINAL]

Use first. Shows compact terminal state and recent useful output.

Forms:

• hitch context - all terminals of current project

• hitch context <terminal> - one specific terminal, more detailed output, usually paired with specific --tail

• hitch context --all - all terminals, includes outside of the project Options:

• --tail <n> - recent visible output lines. Default: 20, or 80 for context <terminal>

• --head <n> - active process head lines. Default: 5, or 10 for context <terminal>

Output is summarized for agents: no colors, blank lines removed. Avoid using too long --tail for simpler use cases, if unnecessary Always default to without --all, use this flag only when specifically needed Usually in most of simple cases you don't have to pass custom --tail or especially --head

hitch send-keys -t <terminal> [OPTIONS] <keys...>

Similar to how tmux send-keys works. Sends input to a terminal. If --tail or --wait is passed, it also prints new output produced after sending keys. (will not include previous history output)

Common keys:

• Enter
• Tab
• Escape / Esc
• Space
• Backspace / BSpace
• C-c, C-u, etc.

Options:

• -t, --target <terminal> - terminal id.
• --wait finish - wait until the foreground command finishes.
• --wait quiet:<duration> - wait until output stops changing for duration, e.g. quiet:1s.
• --wait time:<duration> - wait fixed time before returning output, e.g. time:5s.
• --wait output - wait until any new output appears.
• --timeout <duration> - max wait time. Default: 30s.
• --tail <n> - print this many new visible output lines after sending.
• --force - send input even if the terminal has a running process.

Options must come before keys!

Durations support ms, s, m.

Examples:

• hitch send-keys -t 1 C-u "npm test" Enter
• hitch send-keys -t 1 --wait quiet:1s --tail 40 C-u "npm run dev" Enter
• hitch send-keys -t 1 --wait finish --tail 80 C-u "npm test" Enter

Output behavior:

• Without --wait or --tail, send-keys sends input but prints nothing.
• If --wait is set, Hitch waits, then prints new output from that terminal.
• If --tail <n> is set, Hitch prints up to <n> new visible output lines after sending.
• --wait without --tail defaults to printing up to 40 new visible output lines, so if you expect an output shorter than 40 lines, passing --tail is not necessary

--wait is made to be used instead of commands like "sleep", to not be polling the terminal yourself, prefer using it if needed.

While waiting until finish of command, and expect it to be longer than 30s, pass custom --timeout. But usually you may not want to not wait such longer for processes. Or you may choose to wait for longer commands on your own, by polling output tail after a while.

hitch capture -t <terminal> [OPTIONS]

Mirrors tmux capture-pane behavior. To capture one terminal, prefer context <terminal> over capture; use capture only if more options needed. Also works with alias hitch capture-pane.

Options:

• -t <terminal> - terminal id.
• -p - print to stdout, tmux-compatible.
• -S <start> - start line. Negative values count from the end, e.g. -S -100.
• -E <end> - end line.
• -e - raw/escape output, tmux-compatible.

Accepted compatibility no-op flags:

• -C, -J, -N, -T, -a, -q