Claude Squad TUI Complete Guide: The Shortcuts You Need to Know

The first time you open cs, you'll see a terminal screen unlike the usual — a session list on the left, a preview area on the right, and a row of shortcut hints at the bottom.

It's not complicated, but if you don't spend five minutes understanding what each key does, it's easy to press the wrong key at the wrong time and have no idea what happened.

This article breaks down TUI operation clearly.

Launching Claude Squad

Navigate to your project directory, then:

cs

That's it. Claude Squad launches the TUI and reads the state of the current git repo.

Important: cs must be run inside a git repo directory. It needs git to manage worktrees, and running it outside a repo will immediately throw an error.

Interface Layout

When it opens, you'll see three areas:

Left session list: Lists all tasks, showing name and current status (running / paused / complete).

Right preview area: Shows the output or diff for the currently selected session. Press tab to switch between "terminal output" and "diff view" modes.

Bottom shortcut bar: Always shows you what operations are currently available.

Complete Shortcut Reference

Session Management

Session Interaction

Screen Control

Creating Your First Session

Press N (uppercase) — this version lets you input a starting prompt at the same time, saving you from having to attach and type it manually:

1. Press N
2. Type your task description in the popup input box, e.g.: Write a README.md including installation steps and usage instructions
3. Press Enter to confirm

Claude Squad will:

• Create a new tmux session
• Create a corresponding git worktree (new branch)
• Launch your configured AI agent
• Send your prompt into it

You can then watch the agent start working in the right side of the TUI.

Attaching and Detaching from Sessions

If you want to enter a session directly to add instructions or observe details, press ↵ (Enter) or o to attach — at that point you're directly inside that terminal session, just like using a regular terminal.

To return to the TUI main screen, press ctrl-q. Do not press ctrl-c — that interrupts the agent's execution, not returns you to the main screen.

Viewing a Session's Diff

The agent is working and you want to know what it changed — no need to switch terminals to run git diff. Just press tab directly in the TUI to toggle between "output" and "diff" modes.

The diff shows all changes in this session's git worktree relative to the original branch, in the same format as git diff, but scrollable right in the preview area.

Pausing and Resuming

If you want to pause a running task, press c (Checkout). Claude Squad will:

1. Commit the current changes to the session's branch
2. Mark the session as "paused"

You can resume this session later with r, and the agent will continue from where it left off. This is useful when you want to check another task's results first and come back to this one later.

Deleting a Session

When you're done with a session, select it and press D (uppercase) to delete. Claude Squad cleans up the tmux session and the corresponding git worktree.

Note: Before deleting, make sure you've already merged or pushed the session's changes. Once deleted, the worktree is gone.

Once you're comfortable with the keybindings, the next concept worth understanding is how Claude Squad uses git worktrees to isolate each task — this is the fundamental reason it can run multiple agents in parallel.

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