Draw in your terminal! tmux + Terminal Maxxing w/ Ben Vinegar
Every voice is named by two or more agreeing sources.
“I would say it's fair that I'm a tmux hater.”
Wes admits he used to dislike tmux before seeing Ben's usage.
“the whole thesis of Modem is AI coding is 100% going to be totally real. And if you believe that, then it's going to go down, like the time to deliver code is just going to keep dropping.”
Ben predicts AI‑generated code will become fully real and dramatically speed up software delivery.
“And then I come back in the morning and find out, well, one, maybe it got blocked on a tool approval call because I wasn't running dangerous mode.”
Ben recounts a night‑time run where an agent was stopped by a tool‑approval block.
“I get up to max CPU pretty fast.”
Ben notes his agents quickly max out CPU resources.
“The setup that I use is, Tailscale, you know, SSH into the machine.”
Ben recommends using Tailscale to SSH into a remote machine for a reliable terminal workflow.
“Look, I think if you just want like the UX, I think Zellij, Z-E-L-L-I-J, is almost like an easier one to use.”
Ben thinks Zellij offers a simpler user experience than tmux.
“I find like even KIMI K2-5 will do this totally effectively.”
Ben claims the KIMI K2-5 model can handle tmux control tasks effectively.
“So it, it's nice to, if you have to run multiple terminals to use something like tmux where you can use it, like that's, in my opinion, that's the best AI experience is where the AI can use it and you can use it in, in the same, um, the same way.”
Wes believes the best AI experience is when the AI and user share the same terminal UI.
“There's a text editor I use called Fresh.”
Ben recommends trying the Fresh terminal editor.
“I still use actually Cursor with the shell extension so that I can navigate the files on the file system.”
Ben endorses using Cursor with its shell extension for file navigation.
“99.99% of the time it's not going to do anything bad.”
Ben notes that agents rarely cause harmful actions.
“I'm, I'm using Linux on the desktop and I'm using this stuff. I use the agent to like, I could not use Linux without coding agents.”
Ben recommends using coding agents on Linux to make development tasks possible.
“And the answer is yes, it does matter.”
Ben asserts that frame rate matters even for terminal apps.
“$116 for the first year. No thanks. No thanks.”
The .rodeo domain costs $116 for the first year.
“My experience has been that the agent totally reads this quite well.”
Ben believes agents can accurately interpret ASCII diagrams.
“however, it's super inefficient and I wouldn't recommend it.”
Ben advises against using the terminal to play video because it's inefficient.
“I think he could run a course right now and I would attend it.”
Ben says he would attend a course run by Randy.
“It's called Podguy. I can link to it.”
Ben mentions his open‑source podcast editing tool named Podguy.
“It's the first time I've used Py. Py is loaded in the repository.”
Ben notes that the lightweight agent framework Py is included in the repository.
“Modem is 2 parts. One is it's like a product intelligence platform.”
Ben outlines Modem as a product‑intelligence platform that aggregates feedback.
“Heck yeah. Yeah. I love that. Now you got to scan YouTube and podcasts for sentiment about products.”
Scott expresses excitement about scanning YouTube and podcasts for product sentiment.
“Did you see Palm Springs? That was a good time loop movie. Great movie.”
Scott recommends the film *Palm Springs* as a good example of a time‑loop movie.