Live Activities

Live Activities

Live Activities shows running commands and other tasks in your panel. A build can stay visible while you work in another window; click its activity to return to the terminal when Ferese can identify that window. The panel supplies the appearance, so tasks use your theme and animation settings.

Start using it

After installing with ./scripts/install.sh, open a new terminal and run a command as usual:

cargo build

The installer detects Fish, Bash or Zsh, installs its shell hook, enables shell activities and adds an Activities item to your panel. A Cargo build appears once it has run for 1.5 seconds. A cached build that finishes sooner stays hidden, including its completion message.

These command rules are included:

Command	Delay before appearing
cargo build, check, test, run, clippy	1.5 seconds
npm or pnpm followed by install, build, test, run	1.5 seconds
make	300 ms
git push	300 ms
docker build	1.5 seconds

Rules match the command text at the start of the line. Commands such as cargo +nightly build, npm ci, or env RUSTFLAGS=... cargo build need a custom rule or an explicit wrapper. Commands that don't match a rule are discarded without being logged.

To check the display without waiting for a build, run:

feresectl run --title "Activity check" -- sleep 5

This publishes directly and doesn't need a shell hook, but the panel still needs an Activities item. The check appears after 300 ms and finishes after five seconds.

Existing installations

From an updated Ferese checkout, rerun user setup as your normal user:

python3 scripts/installer/install.py user-setup

This needs the updated feresectl installed. Setup backs up changed config and shell startup files. It preserves an explicit shell-hook #false setting and an existing Activities item, including one you've hidden. After the first successful setup, later installs update the hook files without restoring panel items you've removed or changing your activity settings.

Open a new terminal to load the hook. In an existing Fish terminal, you can load it immediately with:

source ~/.config/fish/conf.d/ferese-activities.fish

The paths above use the default configuration directory. If you set XDG_CONFIG_HOME, use that directory in place of ~/.config.

Add Activities to your panel

Open Settings → Panel → Edit panel, select a group in Arrange, and choose Add item → Activities. Keep its visibility enabled. This is also how to restore the item after removing it.

Activities can live in Start, Center or End. Regular panels use that position and open the activity list in a popup. Morph presents tasks inside its existing island and adds an Activities tab. Changing a group's position doesn't create another Morph island. See Panel configuration for item placement and overflow controls.

For manual panel configuration, add an activities item to an existing group. This complete panel example places it at the end of a floating panel; don't add a second panel block if your config already has one:

panel "main" {
    style "floating"
    end {
        group "tasks" {
            item "activities" kind="activities" priority=20
        }
    }
}

Manual shell setup

Without installer setup, hooks and process watching are off by default. Add an Activities item to the panel and enable activities.sources.shell-hook before loading a hook. From a checkout, source contrib/activities/ferese.fish in Fish, contrib/activities/ferese.zsh in Zsh, or the following in Bash:

source contrib/activities/bash-preexec/bash-preexec.sh
source contrib/activities/ferese.bash

Use absolute paths when adding these lines to shell startup files. Zsh uses add-zsh-hook, Fish uses named pre/postexec events, and Bash composes with bash-preexec's hook arrays. Load bash-preexec before the Bash hook; the hook does not replace an existing DEBUG trap. Hook files never execute captured command text and preserve command status.

The installer copies hooks into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ferese/activities, defaulting to ~/.config/ferese/activities. Fish loads through its conf.d directory; Bash and Zsh get a marked block in .bashrc or .zshrc. Zsh setup honors an exported ZDOTDIR. Bash shells started in login mode must also load .bashrc from their login profile for the installed hook to run.

Process watching is an opt-in alternative when hooks are unavailable. It performs bounded sampling on one worker, and disappearance means expiry, never inferred success or failure. Shell hooks observe interactive commands; they do not automatically wrap them or parse their output. The Cargo adapter requires feresectl run.

Run a command explicitly

Use feresectl run for commands outside the built-in rules, unsupported shells, or scripts where an interactive hook doesn't run:

feresectl run --title "Backup" -- ./backup.sh
feresectl run --title "Tests" -- npm test

Arguments after -- are passed to the command. The command keeps its terminal input, output, working directory, environment, terminal process group and exit/signal status, and still runs if activity publishing fails.

Completion follows the command's exit. A background descendant holding stdout open does not keep the wrapper alive indefinitely.

Cargo progress

A normal cargo build shows that the command is running and whether it finishes successfully. It doesn't report a percentage. To show the number of compilation units completed, use the Cargo adapter:

feresectl run --cargo-json -- cargo build

The adapter reads Cargo's JSON output while keeping diagnostics readable in the terminal. It reports completed units as text because Cargo doesn't supply a reliable total for a percentage. Setting progress "cargo-json" in a rule enables this adapter for matching feresectl run commands; it does not wrap plain cargo build automatically. A build-finished message never completes the activity; completion follows the actual child exit. The adapter also preserves non-JSON output. See the Cargo JSON contract.

Use the activity list

Morph shows up to two activities in its collapsed and peek states, with a +n badge for additional tasks. Higher-priority tasks appear first, with temporary boosts for new tasks and completion results. Hovering holds the current selection in place while its values continue updating. Recording and low battery take priority over ordinary activities.

Click the activity strip or open the Activities tab to see the list. Arrow keys select a row and Enter activates it. Selecting a linked task focuses its terminal and closes the list. If the terminal has closed, or one terminal process owns several possible windows, Ferese leaves the list open. It cannot select a particular tmux pane.

Tasks with reported progress show a percentage inside a ring. Tasks without a percentage show an animated arc around their icon. Reduced motion makes progress changes immediate and uses a static track. Activities do not automatically open the expanded panel.

A visible task's result stays for the configured result display time. Do not disturb limits ordinary running activities to one, hides the badge and suppresses result flashes. When there are no eligible tasks, the regular Activities item has no content and Morph returns to its other content.

Configure Activities

Configure Activities.

Turn off automatic command detection

Turn off automatic command detection.

Command rules

Command rules.

If nothing appears

1. Try the five-second check above. If it appears, the display and broker work; check shell setup and command matching next.

2. Check the panel item. In Arrange, confirm that Activities exists and is visible. On a regular panel, also check its overflow and available space.

3. Open a new terminal. Installing a hook doesn't load it into terminals that are already open. Confirm shell-hook #true in your config too.

4. Check the command and duration. Cargo and npm tasks must last at least 1.5 seconds under the built-in rules. A custom rule can increase that delay. Prefixes and different subcommands may not match the built-in patterns.

5. Inspect the broker while the task runs:

   feresectl -j activity list

   An empty activities array means no task is registered in that session. A registered task can still be waiting for its delay, ranked below another task, or hidden by panel settings. In Morph, also check for recording or a low-battery state taking priority.

6. Check the session and build. A nested preview has its own broker; use the same session socket for publishing and listing. If activity or run is an unknown command, update the installed binaries. Log out and back in after upgrading the compositor and shell.

Shell hooks suppress publishing errors so they don't interrupt your commands. For an ownership or permission error, use a direct publication from the same terminal to see the response:

feresectl activity start diagnostic --title "Activity check" --lease-ms 10000
feresectl activity cancel diagnostic

The lease removes this diagnostic after ten seconds if you omit the cancel. See Publisher ownership and lifecycle for the Linux requirement, ownership checks, limits and expiry behavior.

Publish your own status

See Publishing activities for the CLI examples.

Publisher ownership and lifecycle

See Ownership and lifecycle.

Extensions and templates

See Templates and the IPC schema.

Pomodoro

Start a work session with:

feresectl pomodoro start

The default session has four 25-minute work intervals, with 5-minute short breaks and a 15-minute long break after the fourth work interval. It finishes at the end of the long break. Each completed interval sends a silent notification, and the next phase waits for you to start it unless you've enabled automatic advancement in Pomodoro settings.

Open the activity list to pause, resume, skip, reset or stop the timer. In Morph, the controls are in the Activities tab; other panel styles use the Activities popup. You can reach the buttons with Tab and activate them with Enter. The paused timer stays visible with its remaining time frozen.

The same controls are available from a terminal or a configured keybinding:

feresectl pomodoro pause
feresectl pomodoro resume
feresectl pomodoro next
feresectl pomodoro status
feresectl pomodoro reset
feresectl pomodoro stop

next skips a running or paused interval without counting it as completed work. When the next phase is already ready, next starts it. reset cancels the session and starts again with your current settings, while stop removes it. Only one session can run at a time, and it survives closing the terminal that started it. See the settings reference for suspend and restart behavior.