[biftek]

I use tmux basically the same way but prefer tmux sessions because I find tabs hard to navigate reliably.

With tmux I can assign a name to each session, list all sessions, and have keyboard shortcuts to take me to a specific session or create it if it doesn't already exist. <leader>+J always opens projectfoo, <leader>+K projectbar, etc.

With tabs you need to know which tab contains what and what order everything is in.