How to monitor multiple coding agents without checking every terminal

Start with task boundaries

Before deciding where to watch agents, decide what each one owns. “Improve the app” is difficult to coordinate across sessions. “Add the empty state to this screen” and “review the request cancellation path” give you clearer ownership and a result you can inspect.

If sessions may change overlapping files, use separate working copies or another isolation approach in your existing development process. A status monitor cannot prevent a conflict. A clear division of work is still the foundation.

Give each state a different response

Running work usually needs patience. Waiting work needs a decision. A completed turn needs review. Treating all three as “check the terminal” makes you reopen sessions that have nothing new to show.

Perch puts supported sessions into Needs you, Working and Recent. The screen-edge marks make the same distinction visible while you are in another app. This is a way to route your attention; it is not a measure of whether the code is ready to ship.

Build a short review loop

1. Check waiting sessions when you can give a decision your attention.
2. Identify the project before reading the command or question.
3. Answer the supported request, or open the agent for more context.
4. Review completed work in the project, including the diff and the relevant checks.
5. Give the next instruction only after deciding what the previous turn actually accomplished.

Keep provider limits visible

Not every integration reports the same events. Cursor passive hooks do not expose awaiting-permission status. Claude Code supports tools, questions, plans and replies in Perch; Codex has approvals and replies; Cursor has replies after a turn. Answering is opt-in.

A good workflow leaves room to return to the original app. Missing a supported event and expecting an unsupported event are different problems, and they need different fixes.

Use the shelf for attention, the project for proof

Recent steps can tell you that a session edited files or ran a command and how long it took. They do not preserve the command output or explain whether a test was meaningful. Use them to decide where to look next, then verify the result at its source.

That division keeps the monitor small and the review grounded: Perch helps you notice the handoff; you decide whether the work meets the task.