wezterm-presence

Discord Rich Presence for WezTerm. Shows what you're doing in your terminal on your Discord profile.

Features

• Per-process display with custom icons (neovim, cargo, claude, python, etc.)
• Working directory, tab count, pane count, and elapsed time
• System tray icon with quit menu
• Auto-starts with WezTerm
• Only updates Discord when state changes (no flickering)
• Clears presence when WezTerm closes

How It Works

WezTerm's Lua config writes terminal state (process, cwd, tabs, panes) to a JSON file on every status bar update. A Rust daemon on Windows reads this file and pushes it to Discord via IPC. For WSL panes, zsh hooks set a WezTerm user-var with the current process name since get_foreground_process_name() returns wslhost.exe.

zsh hooks -> WezTerm user-var -> Lua writes JSON -> Rust daemon -> Discord IPC

Setup

1. Build

Requires Rust and x86_64-pc-windows-gnu target (for cross-compiling from WSL):

rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-gnu
cargo build --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu --release

Copy target/x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release/wezterm-presence.exe somewhere on your Windows PATH.

2. Discord Application

Create an application at discord.com/developers. Upload Rich Presence art assets with these keys:

Key	Description
wezterm	Large image (WezTerm logo)
claude	Claude Code
neovim	Neovim
vim	Vim
rust	Rust (cargo, rustc)
terminal	Generic terminal (zsh, bash, fish)
python	Python
nodejs	Node.js
git	Git
docker	Docker
ssh	SSH

The default Discord App ID is hardcoded. To use your own, create a config.toml next to the exe:

wezterm-presence.exe init

3. WezTerm Lua Config

Add to your .wezterm.lua:

local wezterm = require 'wezterm'

-- Auto-start wezterm-presence.exe if not already running
local handle = io.popen('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq wezterm-presence.exe" /NH 2>nul')
local result = handle:read('*a')
handle:close()
if not result:find('wezterm%-presence%.exe') then
  os.execute('start "" /b "C:\\path\\to\\wezterm-presence.exe"')
end

-- State file path
local presence_state_path = (os.getenv('LOCALAPPDATA') or '') .. '\\wezterm-presence\\state.json'
os.execute('mkdir "' .. (os.getenv('LOCALAPPDATA') or '') .. '\\wezterm-presence" 2>nul')

wezterm.on('update-status', function(window, pane)
  local user_vars = pane:get_user_vars()
  local process = user_vars.WEZTERM_PROG or ''

  if process == '' then
    process = pane:get_foreground_process_name() or 'unknown'
    process = process:match('[^/\\]+$') or process
    if process == 'wslhost.exe' then
      process = 'zsh'
    end
  end

  local cwd = pane:get_current_working_dir()
  local cwd_str = ''
  if cwd then
    cwd_str = cwd.file_path or tostring(cwd)
  end

  local tab_count = 0
  for _ in pairs(window:mux_window():tabs()) do
    tab_count = tab_count + 1
  end

  local pane_count = 0
  for _, tab in pairs(window:mux_window():tabs()) do
    for _ in pairs(tab:panes()) do
      pane_count = pane_count + 1
    end
  end

  local json = string.format(
    '{"process":"%s","cwd":"%s","tabs":%d,"panes":%d}',
    process:gsub('\\', '\\\\'):gsub('"', '\\"'),
    cwd_str:gsub('\\', '/'):gsub('"', '\\"'),
    tab_count,
    pane_count
  )

  local f = io.open(presence_state_path, 'w')
  if f then
    f:write(json)
    f:close()
  end
end)

4. WSL Process Detection (optional)

If you use WSL, add these hooks to your .zshrc (or .bashrc equivalent) so the presence shows the actual running command instead of wslhost.exe:

# WezTerm Presence - Process Tracking
__wezterm_set_user_var() {
  printf "\033]1337;SetUserVar=%s=%s\007" "$1" "$(printf '%s' "$2" | base64 -w0)"
}
__wezterm_preexec() {
  local cmd="${1%% *}"
  __wezterm_set_user_var WEZTERM_PROG "$cmd"
}
__wezterm_precmd() {
  __wezterm_set_user_var WEZTERM_PROG "zsh"
}
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook preexec __wezterm_preexec
add-zsh-hook precmd __wezterm_precmd

5. Auto-Start on Login (optional)

wezterm-presence.exe install

Creates a VBS script in the Windows Startup folder.

Config

Optional config.toml placed next to the exe:

poll_interval = 1
discord_app_id = "YOUR_APP_ID"

[processes]
claude = { text = "Using Claude Code", icon = "claude" }
nvim = { text = "Editing in Neovim", icon = "neovim" }
cargo = { text = "Building with Cargo", icon = "rust" }
zsh = { text = "In the Shell", icon = "terminal" }
# Add your own...

Architecture

+-----------+   user-var   +------------+   JSON file   +----------------+   IPC   +---------+
| zsh hooks | -----------> | WezTerm    | ------------> | wezterm-       | ------> | Discord |
| (preexec/ |   OSC 1337   | Lua config |  state.json   | presence.exe   |  named  |         |
|  precmd)  |              | update-    |               | (Rust daemon)  |  pipe   |         |
+-----------+              | status     |               +----------------+         +---------+
                           +------------+

License

MIT