Wraithgrid

Run many claude CLI sessions side by side, each with its own account and project folder.

Install · Usage · Shortcuts · Build from source · Privacy

Why Wraithgrid

Switching claude accounts normally means logging out and back in. Wraithgrid removes that step: every pane has its own account and its own project folder, and all of them run at the same time in one window.

It runs the official claude CLI as-is. For each pane it sets CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR to that account's folder, so every account keeps its own login, settings and history. Wraithgrid never reads, copies or proxies anything inside those folders.

Features

Many accounts at once	Personal, work and client accounts run side by side, each with its own login, settings and history.
Flexible layouts	1, 2 side by side, 2×2 or 3 columns. Drag dividers to resize, drag headers to swap, zoom any pane.
Workspaces	Keep separate sets of panes and switch between them with Ctrl+Shift+1…9.
Folders & icons	Group accounts into sidebar folders by drag and drop, and give accounts and workspaces an emoji icon.
Live pane status	Each pane shows whether claude is running (animated), idle or waiting for your approval.
Shared CLAUDE.md & skills	Every account uses your ~/.claude CLAUDE.md, settings, skills and plugins, or each keeps its own.
Update alerts	A desktop notification tells you once when a new version is released.
Survives restarts	Workspaces, layouts, accounts and folders come back on the next launch.
Themes	Dark, light or system, five accent colors, and terminal palettes such as Dracula, Nord and Tokyo Night.
Native everywhere	Windows 10/11 and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Kali, Fedora, Arch) on X11 or Wayland, including Hyprland and sway.
Private by design	No telemetry. The renderer is sandboxed and reaches the system only through a validated IPC surface.

Screenshots

New pane: pick an account, a folder and launch args	Accounts: one CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR per account, each with its own icon
Settings: shared ~/.claude, theme, accent, terminal colors and font	Light theme, teal accent

Install

Download the package for your system from the latest release, or build one yourself.

System	Package
Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Kali	sudo apt install ./wraithgrid-<version>-amd64.deb
Fedora	sudo dnf install ./wraithgrid-<version>-x86_64.rpm
Arch (and Hyprland on Arch)	sudo pacman -U ./wraithgrid-<version>-x64.pacman
Any Linux distro	chmod +x Wraithgrid-<version>-x86_64.AppImage, then run it
Windows 10 (1809+) and 11	Wraithgrid-Setup-<version>-x64.exe

Every release includes a SHA256SUMS.txt for verifying downloads.

Note

You also need the claude CLI. Wraithgrid finds it on your PATH (including the native installer's ~/.local/bin and npm's global folder). You can also set its path in Settings.

Platform notes: tiling compositors, launchers, AppImage, Windows

• Hyprland, sway, i3 and other tiling compositors. Wraithgrid detects them. The title bar then only has a close button, since the compositor owns sizing and there is no minimize, and the minimum window size drops to 640×420 so the window fits a tile. It runs as a native Wayland client with the app id wraithgrid, for window rules such as:

  windowrulev2 = workspace 3, class:^(wraithgrid)$

• Started from a launcher. A Hyprland exec, a .desktop entry or a dock often starts apps without your shell's PATH. Wraithgrid then asks your login shell for it once at startup (like VS Code does), so claude, node and the tools claude runs are found. Your shell rc can check WRAITHGRID_RESOLVING_ENVIRONMENT=1 to skip slow setup during that call.
• AppImage on Ubuntu 24.04+ and Kali. AppArmor blocks the Chromium sandbox of unpackaged apps, so prefer the .deb, which installs an AppArmor profile. The AppImage also needs FUSE 2 (libfuse2t64 on Ubuntu 24.04, libfuse2 on Debian/Kali, fuse-libs on Fedora, fuse2 on Arch).
• Don't run it as root (for example an old Kali root session). Chromium refuses to start as root without --no-sandbox, and turning the sandbox off is not recommended.
• Windows. Plain shell panes use PowerShell 7 (pwsh), then Windows PowerShell, then cmd. The native caption buttons (with snap layouts) sit on the title bar. An npm-installed claude (claude.cmd) runs through cmd.exe, so launch args containing & | < > ^ % " are refused; the native claude.exe has no such limit.
• Where files live. Config is in ~/.config/wraithgrid/config.json on Linux and %APPDATA%\wraithgrid\config.json on Windows. Account folders default to ~/.wraithgrid/accounts/ (%USERPROFILE%\.wraithgrid\accounts\ on Windows).

Usage

1. Add accounts. Open Accounts (sidebar, Manage).
   • Add account creates ~/.wraithgrid/accounts/<name> for a fresh login.
   • Import ~/.claude points an account at an existing config dir so you keep that login. Nothing is copied.
2. Sign in. Press Login on an account. A pane opens running claude under that account. Press Run /login and finish in your browser. The account shows as signed in once the pane prints a successful login, or when you press Mark as signed in.
3. Open panes. Press New pane (Ctrl+Shift+N) and pick an account, a folder and optional launch args (--resume, -c). You can also open a plain shell in a folder.
4. Arrange them.
   • Drag the dividers to resize.
   • Pick a preset: 1, 2 side by side, 2×2, or 3 columns.
   • Drag a pane by its header onto another pane to swap them.
   • Zoom a pane with Ctrl+Shift+Z.
   • Panes that don't fit a preset stay open but hidden. The +N hidden chip brings them back.
5. Workspaces. Keep separate sets of panes (the sidebar, or Manage to create, rename and delete them) and switch with Ctrl+Shift+1…9.
6. One claude setup for every account. By default (Settings → Shared CLAUDE.md and skills → Overall) every account uses the CLAUDE.md, settings.json, skills/, plugins/, agents/ and commands/ of your normal ~/.claude, so your instructions and installed plugins work in every account. Logins and history stay separate per account. Pick Each account its own to turn it off.
   • An account's own files are not deleted: they are renamed to …wraithgrid-backup and put back when you switch to Each account its own.
   • Accounts added later are linked the first time a pane starts for them.
   • A running claude reads these files when it starts: use Restart claude panes after switching.
   • On Windows, folders are junctions. Files are symlinks with Developer Mode on, otherwise hard links. Editors that save by replacing the file break a hard link, so edit them in ~/.claude.
7. Folders and icons. In the sidebar, + next to Accounts creates a folder (double-click to rename). Drag an account onto a folder to move it in, or onto the list to take it out. Click an account's badge on the Accounts page, or a workspace's badge in Manage, to give it an emoji icon.

When claude exits, the pane stays open with the exit code and last error line, and a Restart button. Quitting Wraithgrid ends every pane's processes. On the next launch your workspaces, layouts, accounts and folders come back and each pane starts claude again. Conversation history belongs to claude itself: add -c to a pane's launch args to continue where you left off.

Shortcuts

Action	Keys
New pane	Ctrl+Shift+N
Close pane	Ctrl+Shift+W
Zoom pane / back to grid	Ctrl+Shift+Z
Move focus left / up / right / down	Ctrl+Alt+Arrow
Switch workspace	Ctrl+Shift+1 … 9
New line in claude	Shift+Enter
Terminal text bigger / smaller	Ctrl+= / Ctrl+-
Reset terminal text size	Ctrl+0
Copy / paste in a terminal	Ctrl+Shift+C / V
All shortcuts	Ctrl+Shift+/
Close a dialog	Esc

Every other key, including Ctrl+C, Esc and the arrow keys, goes to the terminal.

Configuration

Settings, accounts and workspaces live in config.json (see Platform notes for the path). Changes are saved automatically. If the file is ever unreadable, Wraithgrid moves it to config.bad-<timestamp>.json and starts fresh. Wraithgrid never saves terminal content.

Settings covers:

• the claude binary: auto-detected from PATH, with an optional override
• the default account and the default working directory
• sharing ~/.claude (CLAUDE.md, settings, skills, plugins) with every account, or not
• theme (dark, light or system), accent color and terminal color palette
• the terminal font and size
• update checks against GitHub releases, with a desktop notification once per new version (nothing is downloaded or installed for you)

Privacy and security

• No telemetry. The only network activity is opening links you click, in your browser (http and https only), and the optional release check, which you can turn off.
• Sandboxed renderer. The UI runs sandboxed with context isolation. It reaches the system only through a fixed, validated IPC surface.
• Account folders are off-limits. Sharing ~/.claude is the only time Wraithgrid writes into account config dirs, and it only places links and renames what was in the way. It never reads the files. Logins (.credentials.json, .claude.json) are never linked.
• Guarded deletes. Deleting an account's config dir is opt-in, needs confirmation, and only works on the folder that account points to inside your home directory.

Build from source

Requirements

• Node.js 22.12 or newer, and pnpm 11 (corepack enable picks the pinned version)
• A C++ toolchain for the node-pty native module:
  • Arch: sudo pacman -S --needed python make gcc
  • Ubuntu, Debian, Kali: sudo apt install python3 make g++
  • Fedora: sudo dnf install python3 make gcc-c++
  • Windows: Visual Studio Build Tools with "Desktop development with C++", and Python 3
• To build a Fedora .rpm on another distro: rpmbuild (rpm-tools on Arch, rpm on Ubuntu). The pacman package needs bsdtar (libarchive-tools on Ubuntu).

pnpm i                      # installs deps and rebuilds node-pty for Electron
pnpm dev                    # run with hot reload
pnpm dist:linux:portable    # all Linux packages, built in Docker on Ubuntu 22.04
pnpm dist:win               # Windows installer (run on Windows)

If pnpm i asks you to approve build scripts, allow electron, esbuild and node-pty. The repository's pnpm-workspace.yaml already lists them under allowBuilds.

Why the portable build?

node-pty compiles against the build machine's glibc. A package built on a rolling distro (Arch, current Fedora) only runs on distros at least as new. dist:linux:portable builds on Ubuntu 22.04 (glibc 2.35) inside Docker, so one set of packages runs on Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Kali, Fedora and Arch. scripts/test-linux-packages.sh then installs each package in clean containers of those distros and checks it starts. The GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/build.yml does the same builds, plus the Windows installer on a Windows runner.

All scripts

Script	What it does
pnpm dev	electron-vite dev server with the app
pnpm build	production build into out/
pnpm typecheck	tsc over the main/preload and renderer projects
pnpm lint	ESLint and a Prettier check
pnpm test	Vitest unit tests
pnpm test:e2e	builds, then runs the Playwright Electron smoke test
pnpm dist	packages for the current OS
pnpm dist:linux	AppImage, .deb, .rpm and pacman package, on this machine
pnpm dist:linux:portable	the same, built in an Ubuntu 22.04 container (needs Docker)
pnpm dist:win	NSIS installer for Windows

Releasing

Pushing a version tag publishes a GitHub release (.github/workflows/release.yml). The workflow checks that the tag matches package.json, runs the tests, builds the Linux packages (on Ubuntu 22.04) and the Windows installer, then attaches all of them and a SHA256SUMS.txt to the release.

npm version patch -m "chore: release %s"   # or minor / major; bumps package.json, commits, tags v1.0.1
git push --follow-tags

A tag with a suffix, such as v1.1.0-beta.1, is published as a pre-release.

License

MIT © cachewraith