Perhaps like how the Kakoune text editor[0] (discussed a few days ago on HN [1]) uses tmux to manage panes (although that's C++ and just uses the Tmux client[2]).

[0]: http://kakoune.org/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 (the article has a video of panes)

[2]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/f7e2bfd76fc1629ffd4e16...