Terminal Viewer (TUI)¶

strata-notebook-tui is a read-only terminal spectator for a live notebook session. It attaches to a running strata-notebook server over the same WebSocket protocol the web UI uses, then renders the notebook and streams every update - cell status changes, console output, results, cascade and environment-job progress, and an AI agent's activity - as they happen.

It does not edit or run cells. Its purpose is watching: open a notebook in the web UI (or let an AI agent drive it), and follow along in a terminal - a second pane, an SSH session, or a tmux window beside your editor.

Install¶

The viewer ships behind the tui extra (it pulls in textual and grandalf, plus textual-image and Pillow for inline image rendering; httpx and websockets are already core dependencies):

uv tool install "strata-notebook[tui]"      # global: strata-notebook, strata-notebook-tui, strata, strata-worker
# or, inside a project venv:
uv pip install "strata-notebook[tui]"

Plain strata-notebook (without [tui]) installs the server but not the viewer's dependencies, so strata-notebook-tui will fail to start.

Workflow¶

The viewer is a client - you always have a server, a session, and the viewer watching it.

1. Start the server¶

strata-notebook                # serves http://127.0.0.1:8765 (web UI + REST + WS)

2. Have a notebook¶

Scaffold one from the terminal:

strata new my-notebook         # creates ./my-notebook

…or create / open one in the web UI at :8765. (strata-notebook-tui can open an existing notebook directory itself - see --notebook below - but it can't create one.)

3. Watch it¶

strata-notebook-tui --notebook ./my-notebook   # open/reuse a session for that path, then attach

Or, if a session is already open (for example you opened the notebook in the web UI), attach without naming it:

strata-notebook-tui            # auto-attaches the only running session, or shows a picker

The strata CLI wraps the same spectator as strata watch, so you don't need the separate binary on PATH:

strata watch ./my-notebook     # open/reuse a session for that path, then attach
strata watch --session <id>    # attach to a specific running session
strata watch                   # auto-attach the only session, or show a picker

strata watch is watch-only: unlike strata agent, it writes no .mcp.json / CLAUDE.md and never owns the server lifecycle - it just shows a notebook live. Point it at a scratchpad an agent is driving to see the cells land in real time.

Watching an agent¶

The viewer's headline use case is following an AI agent as it drives a notebook in another terminal:

Start the server and open the notebook in the web UI.
Kick off the AI agent there.
In a terminal, run strata-notebook-tui and open the Agent tab.

The agent's reasoning streams into the Agent tab while cells flip status, the selection follows the running cell, and results render live. Agent confirmation prompts are shown as "awaiting driver confirmation" - the viewer is read-only, so the web UI (the driver) answers them.

Layout and keys¶

The left pane lists the cells (status glyph, name, and last-run time); the right pane is split into two tab-groups for the selected cell - the code on top (Source, Tests source) and the runtime on the bottom (Output, Console, Agent, Results). A header line shows the connection state, follow mode, and any cascade / environment / agent activity.

When the driver runs a cell's unit tests, the result shows as a badge on that cell in the list - ✓ 4/4 (green), ✗ 2/4 on failure, ·stale when the cell changed since the run - and the header notes the test run. The top Tests tab (3) shows the test source; the bottom Results tab (7) shows the individual outcomes for the selected cell: each test as ✓/✗/⚠/○ with its failure message (the rewritten-assert diff) underneath - the pytest run, in the terminal.

Key	Action
`1`	Focus the cell list (`↑`/`↓` move the selection)
`2` / `3`	Top group: Source / Tests source
`4` / `5` / `6` / `7`	Bottom group: Output / Console / Agent / Results
`↑` `↓` `PgUp` `PgDn` `Home` `End`	Scroll the focused pane
`n` / `p`	Data viewer: next / previous page of a large table
`s`	Data viewer: sort by the focused column (asc → desc → off)
`e`	Data viewer: export the table to a CSV in the current directory
`f`	Toggle follow mode (auto-select the running cell)
`d`	Show the notebook DAG (layered ASCII; `Esc`/`d`/`q` to close)
`i`	Enlarge the selected cell's image output to full screen (`Esc`/`i`/`q` to close)
`r`	Force an immediate resync (the viewer also auto-resyncs in the background)
`Ctrl`+`←` / `Ctrl`+`→`	Resize the cell-list ↔ detail boundary
`Ctrl`+`↑` / `Ctrl`+`↓`	Resize the top ↔ bottom detail boundary
`Ctrl`+`x`	Reset the panel layout to defaults
`?`	Show the keybinding reference (`Esc`/`?`/`q` to close)
`q`	Quit

The tabs render richly: source is syntax-highlighted by cell language, markdown cells and markdown outputs render as formatted markdown, a single DataFrame / table output renders in an interactive data viewer - a scrollable table you can page (n/p), sort by the focused column (s), and export to CSV (e), backed by the full cached artifact rather than the 20-row preview - and image outputs (e.g. matplotlib figures) render inline - using the terminal's graphics protocol (kitty / iTerm2 / Sixel) where available, degrading to Unicode half-blocks otherwise.

Cell status glyphs:

Glyph	Status
`○`	idle
`▶`	running
`✓`	ready
`✗`	error
`⊘`	stale
`…`	queued

Options¶

strata-notebook-tui [--session ID | --notebook PATH] [--server URL] [--user-header NAME --user VALUE]

Option	Purpose
`--session ID`	Attach to a specific running session id (skips the picker).
`--notebook PATH`	Open / reuse a session for a notebook directory path (the path must exist on the server's filesystem).
`--server URL`	Base URL of the server (default: `$STRATA_TUI_SERVER` or `http://localhost:8765`).
`--user-header NAME`	Identity header name, matching the server's `personal_mode_user_header`.
`--user VALUE`	Identity header value - needed to attach to an owned notebook.

Authentication¶

Against a plain local server (the default), no auth flags are needed. If the server runs behind a proxy with per-user scoping (STRATA_PERSONAL_MODE_USER_HEADER), pass --user-header and --user matching what the proxy injects; the WebSocket attach is owner-gated, so a notebook created under your identity needs the same identity to watch. Point at a non-default server with --server (or the STRATA_TUI_SERVER environment variable). See Privacy & Sharing for the per-user scoping model.