Rig vs terminal tabs

Six tabs and a Procfile is a workflow, not a tool. Rig gives the same processes structure, state and memory.

Who this is for

Anyone living in iTerm

The short answer

Keep Terminal for one-off commands. Use Rig when the day is the same stack of processes and you want state, logs, ports, and MCP without rebuilding the ritual every morning.

Side by side

Rig compared with Terminal tabs, feature by feature
Feature	Rig	Terminal tabs	Note
Primary job	Named projects + process control	Shell sessions you manage by hand
Start the whole stack	Yes	Partial	Procfile / scripts work — recall and status don’t
Unified live logs	Yes	Partial	You can split panes; Rig merges and filters
Port reclaim + Attention	Yes	No
MCP for Cursor / Claude	Yes	No
Session memory across reboots	Yes	No
Zero new UI	No	Yes	If you never want another window, stay in the shell

Choose Rig if

You restart the same five processes every morning
You lose track of which tab owns which port
You want agents on live project state without pasting logs

Stay with the terminal if

Your work is truly one-off CLI jobs
You’re happy scripting everything yourself
You refuse another desktop app on principle

Fair. Rig is for the repeating control-plane loop — not every shell session.