System

System-level introspection commands. Useful in shell scripts to verify τ-mux is reachable and to enumerate what it can do.

ping

ht ping
# PONG

Verifies the socket is reachable. Exit 0 on success; non-zero if the socket isn’t there or τ-mux is unresponsive.

version

ht version
# tau-mux 0.11.0 (build: …)

The reported version is stamped at build time from package.json. Maintainers cut releases via scripts/bump-version.ts (which propagates the version to seven files atomically and can also commit + tag + write CHANGELOG.md in one shot). See the release process page for the full workflow.

identify

ht identify
# surface:1  workspace:0  cwd=/Users/me/code/foo  fg=bun run dev

Reports the focused surface and workspace, plus the same metadata ht metadata exposes — handy as a one-line “what am I looking at” probe.

tree

ht tree
# Workspace ws:0 "build"
#   Pane (split right)
#     surface:1  ~/code/foo  bun run dev
#     surface:2  ~/code/bar
#   Pane
#     surface:3  ~/code/docs

Full workspace / pane / surface tree. Use --json for machine-readable output.

capabilities

ht capabilities --json

Lists every JSON-RPC method the running τ-mux supports, with their parameter shapes. Always --json-friendly. Useful for agent-style integrations that want to discover features at runtime.

shutdown

ht shutdown

Graceful shutdown: persists layout + notifications, stops the web mirror and Telegram service, reaps extension backends and agent subprocesses, then exits.