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Keybindings

This is the source-of-truth catalog of every keyboard shortcut the TUI recognizes. Bindings are grouped by context — the focus or modal state they fire in. A binding listed under "Composer" only takes effect when the composer is focused; one under "Transcript" only when the transcript has focus; and so on.

Bindings are not (yet) user-configurable — tracked for a future release (#436, #437). This document is the contract that future config-file overrides will name into.

Global (any context)

Chord Action
F1 or Ctrl-/ Toggle the help overlay
Ctrl-K Open the command palette (slash-command finder)
Ctrl-C Cancel current turn / dismiss modal / arm-then-confirm quit
Ctrl-B Background the running foreground shell command (turn continues; the command becomes a /jobs background job)
Ctrl-D Quit (only when the composer is empty)
Tab Cycle TUI mode: Plan → Agent → YOLO → Plan
Shift-Tab Cycle reasoning effort for the active provider. DeepSeek-style providers cycle off → high → max → off; OpenAI Codex cycles low → medium → high → xhigh → low.
Ctrl-R Open the resume-session picker
Ctrl-L Refresh / clear the screen
Ctrl-O Open Activity Detail for selected/live/recent tool work, or the full reasoning timeline for thinking blocks when the composer is empty
Ctrl-Shift-E / Cmd-Shift-E Toggle the file-tree sidebar
Alt-G Scroll transcript to top when the composer is empty
Alt-! / Alt-@ / Alt-# / Alt-$ / Alt-0 Focus Pinned / Tasks / Agents / Context / Auto sidebar
Ctrl-Alt-0 Hide/show the pinned sidebar
Esc Close topmost modal · cancel slash menu · dismiss toast

Composer

Editing the message you're about to send.

Chord Action
Enter Send the message (or run the slash command)
Alt-Enter / Ctrl-J Insert a newline without sending (Ctrl-J force-steers while a turn is running)
Ctrl-Enter / Cmd-Enter Force a live steer into the current turn when supported by the terminal
Ctrl-U Delete to start of line
Ctrl-W Delete previous word
Ctrl-A / Home Move to start of line
Ctrl-E / End Move to end of line
Ctrl-← / Alt-← Move backward one word
Ctrl-→ / Alt-→ Move forward one word
Ctrl-V / Cmd-V Paste from clipboard (also bracketed-paste auto-handled)
Ctrl-Y Yank (paste) from kill buffer
↑ / ↓ Cycle composer history (also selects popup/attachment items)
Ctrl-P / Ctrl-N Cycle composer history (alternative)
Ctrl-S Stash current draft; with queued follow-ups during a running turn, send the next queued item now
Alt-R Search prompt history (Alt-R to exit)
Tab Slash-command / @-mention completion (popup-aware)
Ctrl-O Open external editor for the composer draft when it has focus
! command Run a shell command through normal approval, sandbox, and output surfaces

@ mentions

Type @<partial> to open the file mention popup. ↑/↓ cycle the entries, Tab or Enter accepts. Esc hides the popup. As of v0.8.10 (#441), completions are re-ranked by mention frecency — files you mention often + recently float to the top.

# quick-add (memory)

When [memory] enabled = true, typing # foo and pressing Enter appends foo as a timestamped bullet to your memory file without sending a turn. See docs/MEMORY.md.

Transcript (when transcript has focus)

Chord Action
↑ / ↓ / j / k Scroll one line (v0.8.13+: bare arrows also scroll when composer empty)
PgUp / PgDn Scroll one page
Home / g Jump to top
End / G Jump to bottom
Esc Return focus to composer
y Yank selected region to clipboard
v Begin / extend visual selection
o Open URL under cursor (OSC 8 capable terminals)

Sidebar (when sidebar has focus)

Chord Action
↑ / ↓ / j / k Move selection
Enter Activate the selected item (open / focus / cancel)
Tab Cycle to next sidebar panel (Work → Tasks → Agents → Context)
Ctrl-X Cancel all running background shell jobs when the Tasks panel is focused
Esc Return focus to composer

Slash-command palette (after Ctrl-K or typing /)

Chord Action
↑ / ↓ / Ctrl+P / Ctrl+N Move selection
Enter / Tab Run / complete the highlighted command
Esc Dismiss palette

Session Picker (Ctrl-R or /sessions)

Chord Action
↑ / ↓ / j / k Move selection in the session list
1-9 Open the visible session history at that list slot
PgUp / PgDn Page the history pane
Enter Resume the selected session
/ Search sessions
s Cycle sort order
a Toggle current-workspace scope vs all workspaces
d Delete selected session after confirmation
Esc / q Close the picker

Approval modal (when a tool requests approval)

Chord Action
y / Y Approve once
a / A Approve all (auto-approve subsequent calls)
n / N / Esc Deny
e Edit the approved input before running

Onboarding (first-run flow)

Chord Action
Enter Advance to next step (Welcome → Language → API → …)
Esc Step back one screen
1–5 Pick a language (Language step)
y / Y Trust the workspace (Trust step)
n / N Skip the trust prompt

v0.8.29 audit notes

  • Shift+Enter / Alt+Enter newlines now work in VSCode on Windows (#1359). crossterm's PushKeyboardEnhancementFlags command unconditionally returns Unsupported on Windows (is_ansi_code_supported() == false), so the Kitty keyboard protocol escape was never written to the terminal. Without it, VSCode's xterm.js stays in legacy mode where Shift+Enter is indistinguishable from plain Enter, causing the composer to send the message instead of inserting a newline. The fix writes the push/pop escapes (\x1b[>1u / \x1b[<1u) directly on Windows, bypassing crossterm's capability gate. VSCode integrated terminal and Windows Terminal ≥1.17 both honour the Kitty keyboard protocol; terminals that do not understand the sequences silently discard them.

v0.8.13 audit notes

  • Ctrl-S is stash, not history search. Fixed in this revision — Alt-R is history search.
  • Phantom Alt+Up removed. The "Edit last queued message" binding was listed in README but never existed in the key dispatch code.
  • Bare Up/Down arrows scroll transcript when composer empty (v0.8.13). Previously the should_scroll_with_arrows gate was hardcoded to false, meaning bare arrows always navigated composer history even when the composer was empty. Users in virtual terminals (Ghostty, Codex, Kitty-protocol) were especially affected because they couldn't use Cmd+Up / Alt+Up shortcuts.
  • Configurable keymap (#436) and tui.toml (#437) remain deferred. The TuiPrefs struct and loader exist in settings.rs but are not wired at startup. The named-binding registry that would let ~/.codewhale/tui.toml override individual entries is still pending.
  • No other broken bindings found. Every other chord listed above resolves to a live handler in crates/tui/src/tui/ui.rs (key-event dispatch) or crates/tui/src/tui/app.rs (mode + state transitions).