Anthropic’s Agent View for Claude Code adds a full TUI (terminal UI) dashboard for managing parallel background agent sessions. Instead of running one coding task at a time and waiting, you can now spawn multiple agents working in parallel — each tackling a different file, feature, or codebase — and monitor them all from a single interface.

This guide walks you through the core workflow: spawning background agents, using the Agent View dashboard, and applying best practices for parallel agent development.

Prerequisites

  • Claude Code CLI installed and authenticated
  • A project repository you want to work on
  • (Optional but recommended) Git working tree support for true isolation

Step 1: Open Agent View

Once Claude Code is installed and you’re in a project directory, launch the Agent View dashboard with:

claude agents

This opens the TUI dashboard. You’ll see a list of any active or recently completed agent sessions. On a fresh project, this will be empty.

Step 2: Spawn Background Agents

To start a background coding agent on a specific task, use the --bg flag:

claude --bg 'task description here'

For example:

claude --bg 'Write unit tests for the auth module'
claude --bg 'Refactor the database connection pool to use async/await'
claude --bg 'Update all API endpoints to return consistent error schemas'

Each of these spawns a separate agent session running in the background. You can issue all three commands without waiting for any to complete — they run in parallel.

Note: Always check the official Claude Code CLI reference for the full list of supported flags and options. The commands above are documented in the Anthropic docs, but flag names may change between releases.

Step 3: Monitor Sessions in Agent View

Switch back to the dashboard:

claude agents

The dashboard shows:

  • Status for each agent (running, completed, failed, waiting)
  • Task description for each session
  • Log preview — partial output from the current agent operation

You can navigate between sessions using standard terminal navigation keys.

Step 4: Attach to a Running Session

To dig into what a specific agent is doing, attach to its session directly from Agent View. This gives you the full interactive view — including the agent’s current reasoning steps, tool calls, and code edits.

When you’re done reviewing, detach and the agent continues running in the background.

For exact keyboard shortcuts to attach, detach, and navigate, refer to the Claude Code documentation — these are specific to your version.

Step 5: Respawn Failed Sessions

If an agent hits an error or times out, Agent View makes it simple to respawn. From the dashboard, select the failed session and use the respawn option to restart the task from the beginning.

Best Practice: Use Git Worktrees for True Isolation

When running multiple agents on the same repository, the agents can interfere with each other if they’re all modifying the same working tree. The recommended pattern from Anthropic’s documentation is to use git worktrees:

# Create separate working trees for each agent
git worktree add ../feature-auth HEAD
git worktree add ../feature-db HEAD
git worktree add ../feature-api HEAD

# Now spawn agents in their isolated directories
cd ../feature-auth && claude --bg 'Write unit tests for the auth module'
cd ../feature-db && claude --bg 'Refactor the database connection pool'
cd ../feature-api && claude --bg 'Update API error schemas'

Each agent now works in its own branch copy of the repo. When tasks complete, review the diffs and merge them in the order that makes sense.

Custom Subagent Roles

Claude Code supports custom subagent definitions via .claude/agents/*.md config files in your project. Each file defines a specialized agent role with its own instructions, focus area, and constraints.

This is useful for establishing a Writer/Reviewer pattern:

  • writer.md — An agent that generates code and commits
  • reviewer.md — An agent that reviews diffs and suggests improvements

For the exact config format, check the official docs or your .claude/ directory for any examples already present.

Session Persistence

Background sessions persist across terminal closes. If you close your terminal while agents are running, they continue in the background. You can reconnect via claude agents from any terminal session to check status or attach.

Sessions also sync to the Claude desktop and web apps if you’re logged into the same Anthropic account.

Workflow Summary

1. claude --bg 'task A'           # Spawn agent 1
2. claude --bg 'task B'           # Spawn agent 2
3. claude agents                  # Open dashboard
4. Review status, attach as needed
5. claude --bg 'task C'           # Add more agents any time
6. Collect results when sessions complete
7. Review, merge, and commit

For teams working on large codebases, this fan-out development model can dramatically compress how long it takes to parallelize tedious but well-defined tasks: test generation, documentation updates, refactoring, schema migrations.

Caveats

  • Agent View is a relatively new feature — behavior may differ across Claude Code versions
  • Multi-agent git workflows require careful merge discipline; use worktrees or feature branches to minimize conflicts
  • Complex tasks that require back-and-forth clarification work better interactively than as background agents

Sources:

  1. Anthropic Claude Code — Official CLI Reference
  2. Anthropic Claude Code — Product Page
  3. testingcatalog.com — Claude Code Agent View analysis

Researched by Searcher → Analyzed by Analyst → Written by Writer Agent (Sonnet 4.6). Full pipeline log: subagentic-20260511-2000

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