TUI & Dashboard

Layout

The terminal UI has four main regions:

Conversation view (center) — segments: user prompts, assistant responses, tool cards, system notifications, lifecycle events
Instrument panel (right) — CIC telemetry: context bar, memory gauge, tool history, active model
Editor (bottom) — multi-line input with history, slash command palette
Footer (bottom bar) — engine block (provider/model/route), inference panel (context composition with bucket legend), live tools strip with per-tool runtimes, and session token totals (cumulative input/output tokens)

Segments

The conversation is rendered as a sequence of typed segments, each with metadata:

Segment Type	Rendering
UserPrompt	Your input, right-aligned with `>` gutter
AssistantText	Response with teal `│` gutter, meta tag header, markdown highlighting
ToolCard	Collapsible card: tool name + glyph, args summary, result preview
SystemNotification	System messages (compaction, errors)
LifecycleEvent	Single-line status: turn separators, state changes
TurnSeparator	Thin horizontal rule between turns

SegmentMeta

Every segment carries metadata stamped at creation time — visible as a dim header line on assistant responses:

claude-sonnet-4-6 · anthropic · victory · think:medium

Fields: model ID, provider, capability tier, thinking level, active persona, turn number, estimated tokens, context fill percentage.

Tool Cards

Each tool call renders as a compact card with the tool name (glyph + label), a one-line args summary, and a collapsible result preview. 53 tools are mapped to distinctive glyphs.

Collapsed — shows tool name, args summary, first 12 lines of result
Expanded — shows full result (up to 200 lines) with syntax highlighting
Error cards — red separator, formatted error message
JSON results are automatically pretty-printed with serde_json

Expansion

Key	Behavior
`Ctrl+O`	Pin/unpin: expands the nearest tool card and locks it visible. Press again to unpin and collapse.
`Tab`	Toggle expand on nearest tool card (when editor is empty). Backward compatibility.
`Esc`	Unpin any pinned segment.

Instrument Panel

The right-side instrument panel (CIC — Command Information Center) shows real-time telemetry:

Context bar — braille-character density bar showing context fill in real provider token counts (not a character-count estimate). Bucket legend identifies composition zones (cached / input / output / reasoning). Per-turn token stats row below shows last-turn input/output tokens.
Memory gauge — active facts, working memory pins, injected count
Tool history — recent tool calls with glyph labels and timing
Thinking/context telemetry — the panel emphasizes real context and memory state over ornamental effects

Toggle focus mode with /focus to expand the instrument panel.

Sidebar Navigation

Press Ctrl+D to enter sidebar navigation mode. The dashboard border turns accent-colored and keyboard input routes to the design tree:

Key	Action
`Ctrl+D`	Toggle sidebar navigation mode
`Up / k`	Navigate up in the tree
`Down / j`	Navigate down in the tree
`Left / h`	Collapse node
`Right / l`	Expand node
`Enter`	Focus the selected node (inject its context into the agent)
`Home / End`	Jump to first / last node
`Esc`	Exit sidebar mode

Nodes show status icons, open question counts, priority badges, and OpenSpec bindings. The tree is sorted by actionability: implementing nodes first, then blocked, decided, exploring, and seed.

Visual Style

The TUI uses the Alpharius theme — a teal-dominant dark palette:

All borders use rounded corners (╭╮╰╯) — no square corners anywhere
Teal accent ramp for intensity-dependent elements
IBM Plex Mono (or system monospace) for code
Tomorrow (Google Fonts) for UI chrome

Mouse

Mouse capture is on by default. Scroll events pan the conversation; click-drag does not select text in this mode. To select and copy text with your terminal's native selection, press Ctrl+M to toggle mouse scroll off. Press again to re-enable. Esc no longer silently disables mouse mode.

Press Ctrl+Y to copy the currently selected conversation segment as plain text to the system clipboard.

Editor

The operator input area is a wrapped multiline editor rather than an infinitely wrapping single line. It supports cursor navigation, visible cursor placement, prompt history, and proportional height growth as your prompt wraps.

Enter sends the prompt
Shift+Enter inserts a newline
Arrow keys navigate within wrapped input and prompt history
Visible cursor shows the real insertion point instead of guessing by wrap position

Web Dashboard

/dash

Opens a live web dashboard in your browser that connects over WebSocket. Shows real-time conversation, tool calls, memory state, design tree status, and session telemetry. Useful for remote monitoring, screen sharing, or when you want a wider viewport.