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Taskhold

Show the current Taskhold task in iTerm2

By Jake Marsh, who builds Taskhold. Updated 2026-10-26. Facts about other tools checked 2026-10-26. 1 min read.

iTerm2's status bar can show a value your shell sets. Set it from taskhold-mcp statusline and every session shows the task in progress and its bar, a glance at the live board without leaving the terminal.

Also see WezTerm, Starship and tmux.

Set it up with a user variable

  1. Install the Taskhold CLI and save your key.
  2. Install iTerm2's shell integration (iTerm2 > Install Shell Integration).
  3. Add the function below to ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc).
  4. In Settings > Profiles > Session, turn on the status bar, click Configure Status Bar, drag in an Interpolated String component and set its value to \(user.taskhold).
curl -fsSL https://taskhold.com/install.sh | sh
taskhold-mcp login
iterm2_print_user_vars() {
  iterm2_set_user_var taskhold "$(~/.taskhold/bin/taskhold-mcp statusline)"
}

One limit to know

Shell integration sets user variables when a prompt is drawn. While an agent holds the terminal, no prompt is drawn and the value stays where it was. For a value that refreshes on its own, write a status bar component with iTerm2's Python API (iterm2.StatusBarComponent with update_cadence=10) that runs the same command.

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Updated 2026-10-26. Something wrong or out of date? Email hello@greatwork.company.