Status line customization

mecatui can generate optional header and footer status lines from templates or from one local executable. This is a client-only customization: configure it only in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mecatui/settings.yaml (normally ~/.config/mecatui/settings.yaml). It applies to both embedded and mecatui connect sessions. Project files, a remote server, prompts, and a session cannot select or alter it.

With no status_customization: entry, mecatui uses its shipped responsive templates. Keyboard help, the header posture/scroll/changed-file indicators, and the footer activity lane remain mecatui-owned chrome; customization cannot remove them.

Choose one source

status_customization must contain exactly one of templates or command. Its optional interval must be at least one second. Without an interval, templates refresh when their input changes and commands are event-driven.

status_customization:
  interval: 1s
  templates:
    footer:
      full: >-
        <footer><text>{{.Clock.Now.Format "15:04:05"}} · ctx
        {{.Context.Percent}}%</text></footer>
      compact: >-
        <footer><text>{{.Clock.Now.Format "15:04"}}</text></footer>
      minimal: >-
        <footer><text>ctx</text></footer>

header and footer are independently optional. A supplied surface must provide all three variants: full, compact, and minimal. mecatui uses the remaining columns for each surface after reserving its mandatory chrome, then selects the richest variant that fits. Thus a compact header and a full footer may coexist; an omitted surface retains the matching shipped template.

The interval also advances .Clock.Now, so the example above is a template-only clock and creates no subprocess. Restart mecatui after editing settings; v1 does not hot-reload this file.

Template input and escaping

Templates receive a private projection of the status input. Every string is first stripped of terminal control characters and then HTML-escaped for StatusML. A substituted title such as </accent><error>forged</error> therefore stays literal text; it cannot create tags, ANSI/OSC sequences, or links. Numeric fields remain numeric. Use StatusML tags in the template itself, not in values from the input.

Template fields have the same shape as the command JSON below. Clock.Now is a time value and supports {{.Clock.Now.Format "15:04"}}. The Human members are preformatted display values; use each Raw member when a template needs an exact count.

Input reference

Every source receives the same versioned, display-safe snapshot. A template gets the escaped projection described above. A command gets the raw JSON encoding on standard input. The JSON field names are shown here in their emitted Go encoding. Unknown values use the normal zero value: strings are empty, counts and dimensions are zero, and Clock.Now is the zero time until the source refreshes it.

JSON path	Type	Meaning
`Version`	integer	Status input protocol version (currently `3`).
`Server.DisplayTarget`	string	Credential-free target shown by the client.
`Server.ConnectionMode`	string	`embedded`, `connect`, or empty while unknown.
`Session.Title`	string	Optional display title.
`Session.Handle`	string	Fixed 12-column ordinary session handle used by shipped headers: safe `[A-Za-z0-9._-]` bytes are literal except that a leading `-` is encoded as `%2D`; other UTF-8 bytes are uppercase `%HH`, and only complete atoms that fit are included. It has no leading `#` and replaces the v1 `Session.Digest` field in protocol v2; no digest alias is emitted.
`Session.Mode`	string	Active or pending permission mode used by the shipped header.
`Session.ReasoningEffort`	string	`low`, `medium`, `high`, `xhigh`, `max`, or empty.
`Model.ProviderID`, `Model.ID`, `Model.DisplayName`, `Model.Route`	strings	Provider/model routing identifiers, display label, and observed downstream route.
`Model.ContextWindow.{Raw,Human}`	integer, string	Resolved context capacity as exact and display-ready values.
`Usage.{Input,Output,CacheRead,CacheWrite}.{Raw,Human}`	integer, string	Cumulative exact and display-ready token atoms. `CacheRead` is a subset of input.
`Usage.CacheReadPercent`	integer	`CacheRead.Raw / Input.Raw` as an integer percentage, or `0` when input is zero.
`Context.{Used,Window}.{Raw,Human}`	integer, string	Current context use and capacity as exact and display-ready values.
`Context.Percent`	integer	`Used.Raw / Window.Raw` as an integer percentage, or `0` when unknown.
`Workspace.Location`	string	`local`, `remote`, or `unknown`.
`Workspace.Name`	string	Provider-supplied workspace display metadata. It is not a directory basename or a usable path.
`Workspace.Path`	string	Exact local root returned by the privileged local-context RPC. It is available to status templates through their StatusML-escaped projection and to a configured direct local status command. It is empty for remote, untrusted, no-FS, unavailable, and otherwise ineligible sessions.
`Terminal.Rows`, `Terminal.Cols`	integers	Measured terminal dimensions.
`Terminal.HeaderAvailCols`, `Terminal.FooterAvailCols`	integers	Columns remaining after mecatui reserves mandatory header and footer lanes.
`MainAgent.State`	string	`connecting`, `idle`, `thinking`, `running_tool`, `awaiting_approval`, `completed`, `failed`, or `cancelled`.
`MainAgent.Activity`	string	Bounded display activity label.
`MainAgent.Approval`	string	`none` or `awaiting`.
`Delegation.{Total,DirectSubagent,TeamMember,ParallelBranch}`	object	Flat delegated-leaf counts by unit. Each object has `Running`, `AwaitingApproval`, `Completed`, `Failed`, `Cancelled`, and `Stopped` integer fields. `Total` is their component-wise sum.
`Delegation.Subagents`, `Delegation.Parallel`	object	Display summaries with `Running` and terminal-state-collapsed `Finished` counts.
`Delegation.Team`	object	Live-team display summary: `ID`, `Working`, and `Total`; all fields are zero/empty once the team is no longer live.
`Clock.Now`	RFC 3339 time	Source-owned current time; an interval refreshes it.

The input deliberately excludes prompts, transcript and tool content, credentials, authentication metadata, diagnostics, and command output. Workspace.Path is the single privileged exception: status templates receive it through their StatusML-escaped projection and a configured local direct executable receives it in raw input when the embedded local-context RPC successfully resolves the active eligible local session. Without that root, the command uses the configured helper executable's cleaned absolute parent directory, falling back to its launch directory only if the parent cannot be determined; it never implicitly selects HOME.

StatusML

StatusML is semantic markup, not terminal output. A command emits one document with optional header and footer surfaces; a template variant emits its own surface fragment. The optional outer <status> wrapper is useful for a command that supplies both surfaces:

<status><header><accent>mecatui</accent><text> · GPT-5</text></header><footer><text>ctx 42%</text></footer></status>

Each surface contains its styled text and link nodes directly. Headers are left-aligned by the renderer; footers are right-aligned. Text may be wrapped in these semantic tokens:

text, muted, primary, secondary, accent, success, warning, error, and info.

A link keeps its display text separate from its destination. <link> is a StatusML element, not the HTML <a> element. It must be a direct child of <header> or <footer> and its contents must be plain text; semantic-token and nested-link children are not supported:

<footer><link href="https://docs.example.test/status">status docs</link></footer>

These forms are invalid:

<footer><a href="https://docs.example.test/status">status docs</a></footer>
<footer><link href="https://docs.example.test/status"><text>status docs</text></link></footer>

Escaping dynamic command output

Template substitutions are already escaped by mecatui. Do not escape a value again inside a settings template.

A command instead receives raw JSON, so it must HTML-escape every dynamic value that it places in a StatusML text node. Escape & first, then < and >; quotes are also required when a value is placed in an attribute. StatusML decodes those entities back to literal display text, so an escaped value cannot create a tag or alter styling:

Raw value	StatusML text-node value
`A & B`	`A & B`
`<untrusted>`	`<untrusted>`
`</text><error>forged</error>`	`</text><error>forged</error>`

For example, a command written in Python can safely include a dynamic label:

from html import escape

label = status["Workspace"]["Name"]
print(f"<footer><text>{escape(label, quote=False)}</text></footer>")

Do not interpolate arbitrary data into href. A link destination must be a trusted, bounded http or https URL without user information; use a fixed URL or validate it with a URL parser before producing the StatusML document.

Only bounded http and https URLs without user information are retained. Until terminal hyperlink support is added, a link is rendered as theme-styled underlined text rather than an OSC 8 sequence. Unsafe link destinations lose their destination but retain their display text. Control characters, including ANSI, OSC, newline, tab, and Unicode line-separator controls, are removed from markup text, link metadata, and theme data before rendering. StatusML is always rendered as one terminal line.

Command failures and troubleshooting

A status command has a one-second invocation deadline and a combined 4 KiB stdout/stderr limit. Its complete combined output must be one valid StatusML document. In particular, do not write logs, warnings, tracebacks, or progress output to stderr: it is combined with stdout, so it makes the document invalid.

If the executable cannot start, exits unsuccessfully, times out, exceeds the output limit, or emits malformed StatusML, mecatui keeps the most recently successful custom surface and marks it [stale]. If it has no successful custom surface yet, it instead uses the shipped default surface. The command does not receive a failure result or retry signal. /diagnostics reports safe current command state: each header/footer is default, custom, or stale; error is none, unsupported, timeout, output_limit, invalid_statusml, exit, or failed. It never reports captured output, arguments, paths, or raw failure text. [stale] remains the only in-client failure indication; it is not a machine-readable feedback channel for the command.

Test a command independently with representative JSON input before configuring it. Have it write exactly one StatusML document to standard output, and send any command-specific diagnostics to a separate destination that is not its standard error stream. StatusML markup used directly in a template is safely literalized when malformed; malformed command output instead triggers the fallback behavior above.

The v1 token-to-palette mapping is a best effort, not a cross-widget compatibility promise. Issue #799 tracks the stable semantic theme-token contract.

Shipped template appendix

The following is a copy/paste equivalent of the shipped full, compact, and minimal templates. The Go-template trim markers ({{- and -}}) remove source-line whitespace, so each rendered value remains one StatusML line.

status_customization:
  templates:
    header:
      full: |-
        <header><primary>mecatui · session {{.Session.Handle}} · {{if .Model.ProviderID}}{{.Model.ProviderID}}/{{end}}{{.Model.DisplayName}}{{if .Model.Route}}/{{.Model.Route}}{{end}}</primary>{{- if .Session.Mode -}}
        <warning> · mode {{.Session.Mode}}</warning>{{- end -}}
        {{- if .Server.DisplayTarget -}}
        <text> · {{.Server.DisplayTarget}}</text>{{- end -}}</header>
      compact: |-
        <header><primary>mecatui · {{.Session.Handle}} · {{.Model.DisplayName}}</primary>{{- if .Session.Mode -}}
        <warning> · {{.Session.Mode}}</warning>{{- end -}}</header>
      minimal: |-
        <header><primary>mecatui</primary></header>
    footer:
      full: |-
        <footer>{{- if or .Delegation.Parallel.Running .Delegation.Parallel.Finished -}}
        <accent>⑂ parallel {{.Delegation.Parallel.Running}}◐ {{.Delegation.Parallel.Finished}}✓</accent>{{"  "}}{{- end -}}
        {{- if or .Delegation.Subagents.Running .Delegation.Subagents.Finished -}}
        <accent>⛭ subagents {{.Delegation.Subagents.Running}}◐ {{.Delegation.Subagents.Finished}}✓</accent>{{"  "}}{{- end -}}
        {{- if .Delegation.Team.Total -}}
        <accent>⟳ team-{{.Delegation.Team.ID}} · {{.Delegation.Team.Working}}/{{.Delegation.Team.Total}} working</accent>{{"  "}}{{- end -}}
        {{- contextMeter .Context -}}
        <text> · ↑{{.Usage.Input.Human}} ↓{{.Usage.Output.Human}}{{- if .Usage.CacheWrite.Raw}} ⊕{{.Usage.CacheWrite.Human}}{{end}} cache {{.Usage.CacheReadPercent}}%</text></footer>
      compact: |-
        <footer>{{- if or .Delegation.Parallel.Running .Delegation.Parallel.Finished -}}
        <accent>⑂ {{.Delegation.Parallel.Running}}◐ {{.Delegation.Parallel.Finished}}✓</accent>{{"  "}}{{- end -}}
        {{- if or .Delegation.Subagents.Running .Delegation.Subagents.Finished -}}
        <accent>⛭ {{.Delegation.Subagents.Running}}◐ {{.Delegation.Subagents.Finished}}✓</accent>{{"  "}}{{- end -}}
        {{- if .Delegation.Team.Total -}}
        <accent>⟳ {{.Delegation.Team.Working}}/{{.Delegation.Team.Total}}</accent>{{"  "}}{{- end -}}
        {{- contextMeterCompact .Context -}}</footer>
      minimal: |-
        <footer>{{- contextMeterMinimal .Context -}}</footer>

Direct executable command

Use command when local information needs a program. executable must be an absolute path and args are literal arguments. The optional passthrough_env list is the only environment extension: each name must match [A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]* and must not be one of the reserved baseline or terminal-dimension names. The schema has no shell, source, command-string, or working-directory fields. To use /bin/sh, select it as executable and supply its literal arguments.

status_customization:
  interval: 10s
  command:
    executable: /home/alice/.local/bin/mecatui-status
    args: [--format, statusml]
    passthrough_env: [TMUX] # optional: selected parent variables only

An inline shell command is therefore an explicit direct-executable opt-in, not a separate configuration mode:

status_customization:
  command:
    executable: /bin/sh
    args:
      [-c, 'read input; printf "<footer><text>local status</text></footer>"']

The program is invoked directly and receives the raw Input JSON only on stdin. For example, this executable uses the context percentage while emitting fixed, safe StatusML:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import json
import sys

status = json.load(sys.stdin)
percent = status["Context"]["Percent"]
print(f"<status><footer><text>ctx {percent}%</text></footer></status>")

Install it at the absolute path named above and make it executable:

chmod 0755 ~/.local/bin/mecatui-status

A command that interpolates string data into StatusML must escape that data itself; commands do not receive the template escaping projection. They should emit only one bounded StatusML document. Before StatusML parsing, mecatui trims only leading and trailing ASCII space, tab, LF, CR, vertical tab, and form feed. This accepts the trailing newline from the Python print example above while preserving whitespace inside markup text. A supplied header or footer replaces that surface; an omitted surface continues to use its shipped default.

mecatui runs the executable in the eligible local root of the active session when its opt-in local session-context service can resolve one. It refreshes that private lookup after a session is created, adopted, cleared, forked, or switched, and ignores an older response after a newer session becomes active. The root is used only as Workspace.Path in raw command JSON and as the process CWD; templates receive it through their StatusML-escaped projection. If context is unavailable or ineligible, Workspace.Path is empty and mecatui uses the configured helper executable's cleaned absolute parent directory; the local launch directory is retained only when that parent cannot be determined. A remote path is never used as a local CWD. The process receives a fixed safe baseline: HOME, PATH, TERM, LANG, LC_ALL, COLUMNS, and LINES when available. COLUMNS and LINES come from the submitted terminal dimensions.

passthrough_env may add only explicitly named parent variables. Each name must match [A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]*; reserved baseline and source-owned names are rejected. Names are deduplicated, and unset variables are omitted. Do not list secrets. No other parent environment values are inherited. For example, [TMUX] makes an existing TMUX value available to a local tmux-aware integration.

Input changes are debounced for 250 ms. At most one contained command process tree runs at a time; replacement, timeout, and shutdown cancel it. Each invocation has a one-second deadline. Standard output and standard error share a 4 KiB streaming limit. Malformed output, output overflow, terminal controls, or a failed command never render raw output. A failed refresh preserves a bounded last-good supplied surface with a stale marker when it fits; otherwise that surface falls back to its shipped default. Command paths, arguments, input, output, and raw errors are not shown in the status line or diagnostics.

For the lower-level client architecture and the complete source lifecycle, see the status-line section in docs/tui.md.

Choose one source​

Template input and escaping​

Input reference​

StatusML​

Escaping dynamic command output​

Command failures and troubleshooting​

Shipped template appendix​

Direct executable command​