Anatomy
Five regions, top to bottom. Only two are always on screen — the header and the input bar. The rest appear when they have something to say.
Header
The identity block. Who you are talking to, what is powering it, and where this conversation is recorded.
| Line | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Agent name | The focused instance — the thing your next message reaches |
| Session id | This conversation's record. Press it to open the .jsonl |
| Account | The signed-in profile |
| Loaded | Modules and tools the agent actually registered, and boot time |
| Model | The engine the focused agent declares — what * changes |
The tool count is the live manifest, not what the config asked for. If something you wrote is missing here, it did not register and the agent cannot call it.
Conversation
The message stream for the focused instance: what you sent, what the agent said, every tool call it made, and any errors along the way. One instance is one continuous stream — there are no branches to track.
Tool calls render inline as they run. Nothing is hidden behind a toggle you have to know about — the point of the interface is that you can see what the agent did.
Status row
Appears only while something is happening. It carries the spinner and a label for the current activity — booting, working, rebooting, shutting down — and the update notice when a newer Axon is available.
When nothing is in flight the row is empty, so the interface is quiet by default.
Input bar
Where you type, and the most information-dense part of the screen. The symbol on the left is the active mode.
The row beneath the box normally shows your working directory — but it is shared, and several things borrow it:
| What shows | When |
|---|---|
| The path | Default |
| A notice | tui.info / warn / error, tinted, for a few hundred ms |
| An escape hint | A palette is open and Escape will back out |
| The exit ladder | ctrl+c was pressed and outranks everything else |
One line, one thing at a time, and the terminal's own hints always win. A notice fired during the exit window waits rather than displacing it.
Palette
Opens over the input bar when you press a mode key. Type to filter, arrows to move,
Enter to confirm, Escape to cancel.
Every palette is the same widget — the built-in ones and any you register have identical
row shapes, filtering and navigation. That is deliberate: a palette you write is as good
as :, and gets better when : does.
Some rows are a descent rather than an action. Selecting a group rewrites the query instead of running something, and the breadcrumb shows how deep you are. A working row replaces the list while an async action runs, and the list returns when it settles.
Where to go next
Models — what * opens, and how to find a model in it.
Profile Structure — where your config lives, and what each file is for.