Feature Request: Add commands to query the state and metadata of tabs

[adityacodepublic]

Description of the new feature

Currently, there's no way to programmatically query information about open terminal tabs, their profiles, and current working directories. This limits automation scenarios and makes it difficult to build tools that need to understand the terminal state.

Current Limitations

• No command-line arguments to list current tabs (e.g., --list-tabs, --query-state, --active-tab)
• No way to get current working directory for each tab
• No way to identify which profile is active in each tab

Use Cases

• terminal management tools
• automation scripts (scripts that need to interact with specific terminal tabs),
• monitoring tools,
• integration: coordinating tasks or interactions across multiple tabs/profiles etc.

This feature would bring Windows Terminal in line with other modern terminal emulators that provide automation interfaces (i.eTerm2, alacritty, etc.), enhancing the ecosystem.

Proposed technical implementation details

Add a new API interface for querying terminal state with the following capabilities:
wt --list-tabs
wt --query-tabs --detailed
wt --query-tabs --window-id --detailed
wt --list-profiles

[Vedag812]

Hi @adityacodepublic @DHowett can i work on this issue?

[Jaklans]

+1 to this, it would also (in a roundabout way) enable automation like what was requested by Focus/Activate Tab by WT_SESSION #19783. If the query also returns the WT_SESSION, then other systems can correlate that with the window and tab number, and do automation with those values (tab switching).