I find the 4-level object model of tmux too complicated (server/session/window/pane). Even your use case, which is non-standard and meant to showcase the potent

I find the 4-level object model of tmux too complicated (server/session/window/pane). Even your use case, which is non-standard and meant to showcase the potential of tmux, only uses windows in sessions and does not need the complexity of tmux's object model. In fact it is totally doable with screen (one "session" per desktop, which is similar to a tmux "server"). I simply deplore that the tmux developers obviously thought long and hard about this design only to come up with something needlessly complicated and in the end less capable than screen's model (since you can't have different clients with the same windows in different layouts).