KEYBINDINGS.md

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.

Global key chords are not yet user-configurable — tracked for a future release (#436, #437). Hotbar slot actions are configurable with [[hotbar]] and /hotbar; the Hotbar activation chord remains Alt-1 through Alt-8.

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	Move a supported foreground shell wait into /jobs so the turn can continue; use /jobs or exec_shell_wait to inspect it
Ctrl-D	Quit (only when the composer is empty)
Tab	Cycle TUI mode: Plan → Act → Operate → Plan
Shift-Tab	Cycle permission posture: Ask → Auto-Review → Full Access
Ctrl-T	Cycle reasoning effort for the active provider. DeepSeek-style providers cycle off → high → max → off; OpenAI Codex cycles low → medium → high → xhigh → low.
Ctrl-Shift-T	Toggle live transcript overlay (sticky-tail auto-scroll)
Ctrl-R	Open the resume-session picker
Ctrl-L	Refresh / clear the screen
Ctrl-O	Open the whole-turn Turn Inspector, regardless of composer contents
Alt-V / Option-V (macOS)	Open the details pager for the selected, visible, or most recent tool/sub-agent card; terminals that emit the legacy Option-V glyph are also handled
Ctrl-Shift-E / Cmd-Shift-E	Toggle the file-tree sidebar
Alt-G	Scroll transcript to top when the composer is empty
Alt-1-Alt-8	Dispatch Hotbar slots 1-8 when no modal or inline picker is open
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	Clear the whole draft (recoverable — see Ctrl-Z)
Ctrl-Z	Restore the cleared draft (only while the composer is empty)
Ctrl-W	Delete previous word
Ctrl-A / Home	Move to start of input / start of line (readline convention)
Ctrl-E / End	Move to end of input / end of line
Ctrl-← / Alt-←	Move backward one word
Ctrl-→ / Alt-→	Move forward one word
Shift-← / Shift-→	Extend the selection one grapheme at a time
Ctrl-Shift-←/→ / Alt-Shift-←/→	Extend the selection one word at a time
Shift-Home / Shift-End	Extend the selection to the start / end of the line
Ctrl-Shift-Home / Ctrl-Shift-End	Extend the selection to the start / end of the draft
Ctrl-Shift-A / Cmd-A	Select the whole draft (see note below)
Mouse drag	Select composer text; click moves the cursor
Cmd-V / Ctrl-Shift-V	Terminal-local paste (arrives as bracketed paste when supported)
Ctrl-V	Direct clipboard paste in a local or forwarded graphical session
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-Shift-O / F4	Open the composer draft in $VISUAL / $EDITOR; F4 works when the terminal cannot distinguish Ctrl-Shift-O from Ctrl-O
! command	Run a shell command through normal approval, sandbox, and output surfaces

Selection semantics

Typing, pasting, Backspace, or Delete with an active selection replaces or removes the selected text, like any GUI editor. Plain movement keys (arrows, Home/End, word motions) collapse the selection. When a selection covers the whole draft, deleting or typing over it stashes the outgoing text the same way Ctrl-U does, so Ctrl-Z (on an empty composer) or Alt-R draft recovery can bring it back.

Cursor movement and deletion are grapheme-aware: one ←/→ step or one Backspace covers a full emoji ZWJ sequence, flag pair, or combining-mark cluster — never half of one. CJK text moves and deletes per character as expected.

Why select-all is not Ctrl-A: the composer follows the readline convention, where Ctrl-A jumps to the start of the input (paired with Ctrl-E). Select-all is Ctrl-Shift-A on every platform (like Ctrl-Shift-O / Ctrl-Shift-E, it needs a terminal with an enhanced keyboard protocol). On macOS terminals that forward the Command key (kitty, WezTerm, iTerm2 with Command remapping), native Cmd-A also selects all; Cmd-Shift-A works everywhere on macOS because Cmd normalizes to Ctrl.

Hotbar

Hotbar trigger semantics are intentionally Alt-1 through Alt-8 only. On macOS keyboards this is the Option/Alt key plus the number row. Bare 1-8 is normal text input in the composer and remains owned by pickers, onboarding, approval prompts, and modal views.

Function keys and Cmd-1 through Cmd-8 are not the primary Hotbar chords. Many terminals reserve those keys for tabs, windows, or OS shortcuts, and some never forward them to terminal apps. If a terminal is configured to send Alt-1 for a custom shortcut, the Hotbar receives the same reliable chord.

Fresh configs resolve to this default bar unless [[hotbar]] overrides it or hotbar = [] disables it:

Slot	Chord	Default action	Label
1	Alt-1	voice.toggle	voice
2	Alt-2	session.compact	compact
3	Alt-3	mode.plan	plan
4	Alt-4	mode.agent	agent
5	Alt-5	mode.operate	operate
6	Alt-6	palette.open	palette
7	Alt-7	sidebar.toggle	side
8	Alt-8	trust.toggle	trust

Focus state	Hotbar behavior
Composer empty, text, or whitespace	Alt-1-Alt-8 dispatches a configured slot
Sidebar focused, hidden, or auto	Alt-1-Alt-8 still dispatches a configured slot
Slash menu or history search open	Blocked; the inline selector owns the key event
Command palette, help, approval, file picker, session picker, Fleet setup, or any modal stack	Blocked; the modal owns the key event
Onboarding	Blocked; onboarding owns numeric choices

@ 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
Mouse drag	Select transcript text in Codewhale
Ctrl-C	Copy an active Codewhale selection
Cmd-click (macOS) / Ctrl-click (Linux/Windows)	Open an OSC 8 link in a supporting terminal (terminal-owned)

For terminal-native selection, hold Shift while dragging (terminal support varies), then use the terminal's own copy command: usually Cmd-C on macOS or Ctrl-Shift-C on Linux/Windows. Those commands are handled by the local terminal and are intentionally separate from Codewhale's Ctrl-C selection binding. Over SSH, Codewhale sends copy requests back through OSC 52, or via tmux's load-buffer -w path when running inside tmux.

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/trust gates → setup checkpoint)
Esc	Step back one screen
1–9	Pick a language (Language step)
0–9	Pick a provider (Provider step; SGLang, vLLM, and Ollama are keyless by default)
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).