I recently stumbled across tmux while trying to provide a more customized UX in a bash script. Tmux and screen seemed a little more powerful than I needed, with lots of ways to accidentally corrupt the terminal. More and less were pretty close to what I wanted, but I could not figure out how to accept arbitrary input from the less prompt, exit, and pass it to bash.

Maybe that's not what less is for. Any tips on how I can create a less UX with custom input handling would be appreciated.