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.

Recency-First Cycling

Within each tier, sessions are sorted by most recently active first (except Waiting, which uses urgency ordering). This means the "hottest" sessions, those you worked on most recently, come first.

Pressing Alt+a repeatedly within 2 seconds (configurable via attend_cycle_ms) cycles through candidates without revisiting:

  1. First Alt+a: jumps to most recently active candidate

  2. Second Alt+a (within 2s): jumps to next most recent

  3. Third Alt+a (within 2s): jumps to the next, and so on

After a 2-second pause, the next press resets and jumps to the most recent candidate again.

If the only candidate in the top tier is the session you are already on, attend falls through to the next tier so you always move somewhere.

Working Jump (Alt+w)

While smart attend focuses on sessions that need your attention (waiting, done, idle), the working jump focuses on sessions that are actively running.

Press Alt+w to jump to the next working session. This is useful when you want to check on sessions that are in progress.

Only Working sessions (actively generating output or calling tools) are included. Waiting sessions are excluded since they need attention, which is `Alt+a’s domain. Sessions are ordered by most recently active first.

Working jump uses the same rapid-cycle behavior as smart attend. Pressing Alt+w repeatedly within 2 seconds cycles through all working sessions without revisiting.

The key is configurable via working_key in the plugin configuration.

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