Feature Request: Hook stdout option to write to TTY for terminal control

[pathammer]

Kiro Product

CLI

Feature Description

Hooks currently run in isolated subprocesses with stdout captured silently. This prevents terminal escape sequences from reaching the TTY, making it impossible to control terminal features like iTerm2 tab colors/titles from hooks.

Add a tty: true option that writes hook stdout directly to the parent terminal:

{
 "userPromptSubmit": [{
   "command": "echo -ne \"\\033]0;🪨 Working...\\007\"",
   "tty": true
 }]
}

Use Case

I run an orchestrator agent that spawns long-running subagents for complex tasks. I want to glance at terminal tabs and instantly see status:

• Amber tab + task snippet = working (e.g., "🪨 deploy lambda...")
• Green tab = done

With userPromptSubmit hook + tty: true, I could set the tab title to show the first 30 chars of my prompt. With stop hook, I could reset to green.

Current workaround uses iTerm2 Triggers matching Kiro's printed output (Invoking .*subagent, ↳ done), but this can't customize tab titles with dynamic content like the prompt text.

Additional Context

Attempted solutions that don't work:

• Direct escape sequences in hook command - stdout captured
• Redirect to /dev/tty - subprocess lacks TTY access
• osascript/iTerm2 Python API - requires permissions, complex setup

[github-actions]

Thanks for opening this issue and for the detailed write-up! The idea of adding a tty: true option to hooks so terminal escape sequences can reach the parent terminal for things like dynamic tab titles and colors is a really creative use case. A maintainer will take a look at this shortly. We appreciate you sharing the workarounds you've already tried — that kind of detail really helps! 🙌

[marioizquierdo]

+1 on this. I'm usually running 3-4 kiro-cli sessions in parallel with iTerm2, and every tab shows the same unhelpful "kiro-cli (kiro-cli-chat)" title. There's no way to tell them apart at a glance. My personal workaround is typing Cmd+i and renaming the tab manually.

As kiro-cli keeps improving session management in the terminal, here are a few more suggestions:

1. /rename <name> slash command to manually set the terminal tab title (like Claude Code's /rename)
2. Auto-title: after the first prompt of a session, use a lightweight LLM to summarize it into a short title (e.g., "CDK infra refactor") and automatically set the tab title. Similar to how chatgpt/gemini name each chat session.