Smart Attend

Smart attend is the core feature that makes multi-session Claude Code practical. Instead of manually checking each tab, you press a single key and cc-deck takes you to the session that needs your attention most.

How It Works

Press Alt+a (configurable) to trigger smart attend. cc-deck evaluates all active sessions, picks the highest-priority one you have not recently attended, and switches to its tab. Press Alt+a again to cycle to the next candidate.

The algorithm uses round-robin within a priority-ordered candidate list, so every session that needs attention gets visited in turn.

Priority Tiers

Smart attend evaluates sessions in this order. Higher-priority sessions are always attended before lower-priority ones:

Priority State Why

1 (highest)

Permission waiting

Claude Code is blocked and cannot continue until you grant permission. Oldest request first.

2

Notification waiting

An informational notification that may need review. Oldest first.

3

Done / Agent done

The session just finished its task. You likely want to review the result. Tab order.

4 (lowest)

Idle / Init

The session is waiting for input or has not started yet. Tab order.

Sessions That Are Skipped

Two types of sessions are never included in the attend rotation:

Working sessions

Sessions where Claude Code is actively running (generating output, calling tools). There is nothing for you to do until the work completes.

Paused sessions

Sessions you have explicitly paused. See Pause for how to toggle this.

Round-Robin Behavior

Smart attend does not always jump to the same highest-priority session. It tracks which session you last attended and continues from there.

For example, if you have three sessions waiting for permission (A, B, C):

  1. First Alt+a: attends A

  2. Second Alt+a: attends B

  3. Third Alt+a: attends C

  4. Fourth Alt+a: back to A (if still waiting)

This ensures every session gets your attention, not just the first one in the list.

The round-robin state is persisted to disk, so it survives Zellij restarts and is shared across sidebar instances on different tabs.

Visual Indicators

The sidebar uses visual cues to show session state:

  • Bold text: Session is waiting for permission (highest priority)

  • Teal background: The session you are currently viewing

  • Amber cursor: The session selected in navigation mode

  • ⏸ icon: Session is paused (excluded from attend)

  • Dimmed text: Paused session name