Show HN: Hop – project sessions beyond tmux
Hop moves project sessions to the window-manager level to manage terminals, GUI apps, and editors across local, container, and SSH environments.
Hop is a project-session tool designed to replace tmux for developers who need to manage more than just terminal windows. According to the creator on Hacker News, the tool emerged from frustration with tmux's limitation to terminal-only sessions — especially as projects accumulate browser tabs and coding agents spawn concurrent tasks.
The key difference is architectural: Hop elevates project sessions to the window-manager level, allowing terminals and GUI applications to coexist within a single project session. Unlike tmux, which requires a server instance in each environment, Hop lets shells and editors run locally, in containers, or over SSH without that constraint. This design addresses a practical gap for developers working in sandboxed or remote environments where tmux's model breaks down.
The creator notes that the motivation sharpened once coding agents became commonplace — the volume of parallel activity in a typical project session now exceeds what a terminal multiplexer can reasonably orchestrate. Browser tabs and long-running background processes now share workflow space with code editing, and Hop's window-manager approach keeps them synchronized across environments without forcing everything through a terminal abstraction.
Hop is open source on GitHub, making the full implementation available for review and contribution from the developer community.
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