Cli GrideratorYour terminals.
One workspace.

The scrolling grid shows only several panes at once. The remaining panes sit below the visible area, but their terminal sessions continue running. Before taking measurements, we checked that Griderator reported twenty panes, inspected pane twenty in zoom view, returned to the full grid, and verified every pane position from one through twenty.

Each of the five memory samples also verified twenty Bash shell processes and twenty attached tmux clients. The result includes the offscreen panes. This comparison uses twenty terminals in every setup; it is not a six-pane result multiplied into an estimate.

Each terminal ran an idle Bash shell with startup files disabled, backed by its own tmux session. Kitty also used tmux so both applications provided session persistence. All setups used isolated settings, fresh private tmux servers, a 10,000-line scrollback limit with mostly empty history, and a 7-point font. No coding agents, builds, or model workloads were started.

We opened real desktop windows and waited for every terminal client to attach. After settling, we took five process-memory samples roughly one second apart. The figures above are the medians from the fresh twenty-terminal rerun: one completed trial per setup. Earlier three-trial measurements were consistent, with Griderator around 91–92 MiB, independent Kitty around 1,259–1,275 MiB, and shared-process Kitty around 220 MiB.

The totals include the application, its helper processes, the tmux server and clients, and all twenty shells. We used proportional set size (PSS), which divides shared memory between the processes using it. Adding ordinary resident-memory figures (RSS) would count shared libraries repeatedly and exaggerate the cost of multiple processes. The Linux kernel documentation explains PSS and RSS.

For Kitty’s shared-process comparison, we used --single-instance with a separate test instance group. This creates individual desktop windows within one Kitty process, as described in Kitty’s command-line documentation. All test windows and sessions were closed after measurement.

The measured benefit is lower terminal overhead. If you run twenty coding agents, servers, or other programs, those programs still need their own memory. Griderator does not combine their processes or share their model contexts. The percentage saving for a busy workspace will therefore be smaller than the idle-shell percentages above.

These figures measure process RAM, not the complete system cost: compositor allocations and GPU memory are not fully included. Window geometry also differs. Kitty used 70-by-16-cell windows; Griderator used its normal scrolling layout with wider panes, and only some panes were visible at a time. Both setups had twenty live sessions, but they did not display identical arrangements.

This is a local benchmark, not a promise of the same savings on every machine. Shell customizations, terminal contents, long scrollback histories, drivers, and the programs you run can change the result.

Run these from a terminal after installation. Pane numbers refer to positions in the current grid.

cligrid                 # Open or raise the grid
cligrid focus 3         # Focus pane three
cligrid zoom 3          # Enlarge pane three
cligrid zoom off        # Return to the grid
cligrid panes 6         # Set the pane count (1–20)
cligrid swap 1 3        # Exchange two pane positions
cligrid status         # Inspect the running workspace
cligrid hide           # Hide the window
cligrid show           # Show it again
cligrid restart 3      # Reconnect pane three
cligrid quit           # Close the grid; tmux work continues
cligrid help zoom      # Read help for one command

• Ctrl + Shift + Arrow keys: move focus between panes.
• Ctrl + Shift + 1–9: focus a numbered pane; 0 selects pane ten.
• Ctrl + Shift + Z: zoom the focused pane.
• Ctrl + Shift + P: open the command palette; type an action, then Enter to run it.
• Ctrl + Shift + C / V: copy or paste.
• Ctrl + Shift + G: search the focused pane.
• Ctrl + Shift + A: jump to a pane needing attention.
• Ctrl + Shift + Page Up / Page Down: reach additional rows.
• Ctrl + Shift + ,: open Settings.
• Ctrl + Shift + /: view the shortcut reference.

Restart reconnects a pane and keeps its tmux session. Reset ends a session and starts a fresh terminal. cligrid reset 3 resets only pane three; cligrid reset resets every pane.

Run in all panes, also available as cligrid all <command>, replaces the targeted sessions. Use it only when you intend to stop their existing work. GUI reset dialogs ask for confirmation; command-line requests execute directly. Save work before resetting or replacing sessions.

For automation, begin with cligrid help send, cligrid help run, and cligrid help wait. These explain text input, command execution, and waiting for output. Review the destination pane before sending commands to a running shell or agent.

For a Linux archive installation, try ~/bin/cligrid doctor; on macOS, try ~/.local/bin/cligrid doctor. If that works, add the corresponding bin directory to PATH in your shell configuration and open a new terminal. On Windows, launch Cli Griderator from the Start menu or the extracted portable folder; these Linux/Mac control commands do not apply.

Run cligrid doctor in the environment where you installed it and address the reported missing dependencies. Linux needs a graphical desktop session; a plain SSH terminal does not provide one. On Windows, check that you have Windows 10 1903 or newer / Windows 11 on an x64 PC. Extract the complete portable ZIP before opening the app. If it is already running in the system tray, double-click its icon.

A command that exits rapidly several times stops retrying and shows Restart and Edit command controls. Check that command and its dependencies before restarting it. For small text, zoom the pane or reduce the number of panes, then adjust the font in Settings. If a font is missing, select one installed on your system.

On Windows, choose “Exit and stop terminals” before running the new installer, or extract a new portable folder. Back up %APPDATA%/Cli Griderator/settings.json; uninstalling retains these settings.

On Linux and Mac, check your installed release with cligrid version. When a new release is available, quit the grid and rerun the same installation method you originally used. Back up ~/.config/cligrid beforehand. Reopen the grid and run cligrid doctor. Avoid mixing the Debian package and per-user archive installs, which can leave different versions on PATH.