abtop: Like btop, But for All Your AI Coding Agents

If you've ever found yourself juggling multiple AI agents—like Claude writing code, Cursor fixing bugs, and some custom GPTs generating tests—you know the chaos of not seeing what's actually happening. Each agent is a black box, and you're just hoping they're not all stuck on the same impossible problem.

Enter abtop, a dev tool that feels like a breath of fresh air. It's basically btop but purpose-built for monitoring all your AI coding agents at once. Instead of CPU/MEM bars, you get real-time agent activity, status, and maybe a few hints at what they're thinking.

What It Does

abtop gives you a terminal-based dashboard that shows you every AI agent you have running—whether they're local models or remote API calls. Think of it as htop for your agent swarm. You can see which agents are busy, which are idle, how many tokens they've burned through, and even peek at their recent outputs. No more switching between tabs, logs, or praying.

Why It’s Cool

Honestly, the most painful thing about working with multiple agents is the lack of visibility. You don't know if Agent A is stuck on a syntax error or Agent B is about to overwrite your entire project. abtop solves that by giving you:

• Live agent status – Running, waiting, errored, done. At a glance.
• Token usage per agent – Know which agent is eating your budget.
• Recent output logs – See the last few lines each agent generated.
• Keyboard shortcuts – Kill, restart, or inspect agents without leaving the terminal.

It's built with simplicity in mind. The developer (graykode) clearly understood that devs don't want another heavy IDE plugin or web dashboard. They want something fast, lightweight, and terminal-native.

How to Try It

You can grab the source from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/graykode/abtop
cd abtop
pip install -r requirements.txt
python abtop.py

Or if you're on macOS/Linux and want a one-liner:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/graykode/abtop/main/install.sh | bash

No Docker, no npm, no nonsense. It's Python—so it runs anywhere Python runs.

Final Thoughts

I genuinely think this is one of those "I didn't know I needed it until I had it" tools. If you're using multiple AI coding agents in parallel (which is becoming more common as models get cheaper), abtop is a no-brainer. It saves you from the "are they still running?" anxiety and helps you spot issues before they cascade.

Give it a try next time you're juggling three agents rewriting your React app. You'll wonder how you lived without it.

Found this useful? Follow @githubprojects for more cool open-source tools.