pelazas/p2pmux

Peer-to-peer terminal multiplexer for macOS and Linux. Every pane is a real shell on the machine of whoever opened it: their toolchain, their env, their AI subscription. Hop into a teammate's pane and you get a shell on their machine without holding their keys.

userB joins with the ten-character code, opens a pane of their own, then takes control of userA's pane and runs a command in it. Both windows are real clients; the pane titles say who hosts what.

curl -fsSL https://p2pmux.com/install.sh | sh

p2pmux                       # you host; Ctrl+S shows the line to send
p2pmux join 4KP7Q-M2XRW      # them, on their own machine

Ctrl+S copies that second line so you can paste it into a chat. A Mac and a Linux box work in the same session.

The join code is a password. Anyone who has it can take a real shell on every pane they control. Read the trust model before you send it.

Install

curl -fsSL https://p2pmux.com/install.sh | sh

macOS and Linux, x86_64 and arm64. The script fetches a binary and its SHA256 from GitHub Releases and checks the hash before installing. You can read the script first. Binaries come from GitHub, not from p2pmux.com.

Homebrew:

brew tap pelazas/tap
brew trust pelazas/tap
brew install p2pmux

Homebrew 6 will not load a formula from a third-party tap until you trust it. On Homebrew 5, skip brew trust.

From source (Rust 1.91 or newer):

cargo install p2pmux --locked

Linux builds need glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36 and up). A musl system has to build from source. Windows is not supported.

Update the same way you installed. On the inbox, click the update line (or arrow onto it and press Enter) to copy that command, paste it in a shell, then quit and start again. p2pmux --version prints what you are running. A session already running keeps the binary it started with.

Quick start

Two terminals on this machine:

p2pmux create                # terminal 1; Ctrl+S copies the join line
p2pmux join 4KP7Q-M2XRW      # terminal 2

Two machines you own: p2pmux pair on the new one, then p2pmux pair <code> on this one. After that, p2pmux rejoins on either without a code.

Command	What it does
p2pmux	Start or rejoin a session
p2pmux join <code>	Join someone else's session
p2pmux attach [name]	Attach to a session already running here
p2pmux pair	Pair a machine you own
p2pmux list	List live sessions on this machine
p2pmux kill <name>	Stop a session
p2pmux setup	Install agent hooks and the ctl skill
p2pmux doctor	Check the install

The join code lasts six hours. If rendezvous is down, Ctrl+S offers a ticket that contacts no service at all.

If this is useful, star pelazas/p2pmux on GitHub.

What you get

• Every pane is a PTY on its owner's machine. Host and guest are per pane, not per person.
• Type into a free pane to take control. Active typing is protected. Nobody can take the keyboard while you are typing.
• Shared tabs, panes, and nested splits. Up to 8 members, 9 tabs, 8 panes per tab.
• End-to-end encrypted peer-to-peer streaming, over an iroh relay when NAT requires it. The tab bar shows direct 55ms or relayed 120ms.
• If the coordinator's laptop closes, panes on every other machine keep running. Layout changes and new joins pause. After five minutes the earliest-joined survivor takes over.
• Ctrl+O lists every detected coding agent on every machine in the session, sorted by which one is blocking you, and a grid of every pane beside that list. Press Enter or click a window to type in that terminal.

Keys

Key	Action
Ctrl+ arrows	Focus a neighboring pane
Ctrl+P	Pane mode (split, close, lock, zoom)
Ctrl+T	Tab mode
Ctrl+S	Copy the join line
Ctrl+O	Inbox
Ctrl+Q	d detaches; closing the window ends the session

Keys, mouse, scrollback, pairing, agent hooks, and config: USAGE.md.

Trust

A p2pmux session is a fully trusted shared shell. Anyone with the join code or ticket can see every pane and can obtain interactive control of the terminals in it: run commands, read output, touch any file that user account can touch.

Processes and credential files stay on the pane host's machine and are never uploaded to peers. That is a real boundary. It is not a sandbox: a controller can still use your credentials, or print one to the screen, through the shell you handed them.

Treat the code like a password. Share it only with people you would hand an unlocked laptop to. For anyone else, use a separate low-privilege account and keep production credentials out of shared panes.

The longer version is at p2pmux.com/trust.

Telemetry

On first run, p2pmux asks whether it may send one anonymous line a day. Enter means yes. p2pmux sends nothing until you answer, and nothing if you say no. p2pmux telemetry off stops it. DO_NOT_TRACK=1 and CI skip the prompt and send nothing. A machine with no terminal to ask in, such as a droplet running p2pmux daemon, is never asked and never sends.

Status

Early, but real. Sessions run between machines on different networks, on macOS and Linux. Peers must share a protocol pin; CHANGELOG.md lists which releases can join each other.

Found a rough edge? Open an issue with p2pmux --version on both machines and whether the tab bar said direct or relayed.

License

MIT.