The workbench
A tour of Devplane's interface: the regions, a change's six views, the review, the palette and the keys that matter.
The workbench is one page served by the host on loopback, laid out like an editor: a title bar, an activity bar, a sidebar list, tabs, a bottom panel and a status bar. Nothing is fetched from the internet and nothing needs an account.
devplane open # in your browser
devplane app # in its own window (--features app)Press ? anywhere to list the keys bound on the current surface.
The regions
| Region | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Title bar | where you are, the find box (⌘K / Ctrl+K), New change, sidebar and panel toggles |
| Activity bar | one icon per surface, each with a count |
| Sidebar | the current surface’s list: changes by project, inbox items, sessions |
| Editor | tabs of what you opened |
| Bottom panel | Activity and Sight (⌘J) |
| Status bar | the host connection, sessions working, projects, what needs you, the theme |
The activity bar
| Surface | Go-to key | What it lists |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox | g i | what needs a person, most urgent first, across every project |
| Changes | g c | every change, grouped by project, with its state |
| Sessions | g b | every agent session on the machine, watched or driven |
| Specifications | g s | each project’s spec folders, task counts and open questions |
| Ledger | g l | every decision, and on whose authority it was made |
| Forge | open GitHub issues and pull requests across registered projects | |
| Reports | g r | findings one project filed about another |
| Setup | this machine’s channels, and each repository’s devplane.toml read back |
A zero count shows nothing; a count is always a number, never a colour alone.
Tabs
A click on a list row opens a preview tab (title in italics) that the next click replaces. Double-click or Enter pins it. Tabs are kept per browser tab and sent nowhere. The address always names what is showing, so a link opens the same view.
A change
Open a change from Changes, the palette, or a devplane://change/<id> link (in the app). The header shows the title, state, project, branch, spec folder and the gate standing in one sentence, for example check exited zero against the working tree as it stands. Beside the state, when the change’s own diff weakened a check, the header reads verified · 1 check weakened — the same words in the Changes list, the palette, the Specifications page and the inbox. The toolbar holds Review, Run gates, Offer as pull request (only when verified), Finish, Archive, and Editor / Terminal to open the worktree. While a weakened row is unseen, Review is the primary action, and pressing Offer is refused with each unseen row named and a button that opens it.
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview | cards for gates, tasks, ledger and agent; the facts; the history; reports it filed |
| Tasks | ticked and seen-by-a-passing-check counts, tasks ticked but sent to nobody, requirements and the tasks citing them, spec drift with Tell the run / Accept what it saw |
| Review | the diff, below |
| Gates | every gate run with its commands and exit codes, and the certificate with Copy as markdown |
| Ledger | this change’s decisions, filterable by authority |
| Agent | the latest run’s conversation, a composer to prompt it, Stop…, and the files it wrote and commands it ran |
Only verified is green. See Verified done.
The review
A file tree beside a diff against the merge base, uncommitted and untracked files included.
- Checks weakened or changed comes first when there is anything under it: an added skip marker, a removed assertion, a deleted test, a lint suppression, an edit to the gates, CI or a checker’s configuration (the full list). Each row says what it matched and whether you have read it; I have read this (or marking a hunk seen in that file) records it, and an offer waits for every one.
- Then the files in the order
[review] rolesdeclares (shared, logic, security, integration, wiring, tests), each with whether a declared test covers it. With no roles declared, files are in path order and the view says so. - By risk / By intent switches to grouping by the run that wrote each file and the tasks it was sent. Files no run was asked for sit under their own heading.
- Formatting-only hunks are collapsed and counted.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
j / k | next / previous hunk |
n / p | next / previous file |
s | mark the hunk seen |
f | request a fix: a prompt to the change’s latest run, quoting the hunk |
x | expand this file’s collapsed formatting-only hunks |
v | unified or side by side |
1 / 2 | by risk / by intent |
Seen on a hunk is a mark in this browser only, keyed by the hunk’s content, so a hunk the agent rewrites is unseen again; it is sent nowhere and decides nothing. Reading a weakened-check row is the one mark the host keeps, because an offer waits for it. The same pane is a change’s Review view and #review/<id>. On the command line: devplane change review <id> [--by intent].
Sessions
Every session on the machine, watched or driven, in one grid. The state counts above it are its filters; group by project or by state; select a row for its detail.
Starting a change
New change (title bar, or Alt+N) opens a form: one or more projects, an optional specification, a title (also the branch name), the first prompt, the agent, and whether to use an isolated worktree. Before anything is created it shows what would happen in each project, including every refusal: an untrusted repository, a dirty checkout, a devplane.toml that will not load. It is the same preflight devplane change start runs.
The palette
⌘K (or Ctrl+K) finds changes, surfaces (Go to …), actions and projects by name. Start with > to list only actions. Any other text can also be searched across every session’s tool calls, questions and errors, as devplane search does.
The bottom panel
Activity is every session, newest event first, one line each: time, project, agent (and whether Devplane drives it), state, what it is doing, context used. Click a line to open the session.
Sight is the limit of what this machine can see:
- Watched end to end: vendors whose sessions Devplane has proved it can follow.
- Read, not proved against a live session: channels that are wired but unverified.
- Seen only when Devplane starts them: agents it can drive but not watch.
- Projects whose configuration cannot be read, when there are any.
An empty Sessions list does not mean nothing is running; Sight says what is not watched. See Watching sessions.
Keys
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
⌘K / Ctrl+K | command palette |
? | the keys bound here |
Esc | close the palette or help, or go back to the list |
Alt+N | new change |
⌘B / Ctrl+B | show or hide the sidebar |
⌘J / Ctrl+J | show or hide the bottom panel |
Alt+W · Alt+] · Alt+[ | close tab · next tab · previous tab |
j k / ↓ ↑ | move through a list |
Enter | open |
g g · G | first · last |
r | review, on a change |
No key fires while you type in a field, except Esc.
The window
devplane app hosts in-process and adds a notification when an agent asks or gives up, a count in the menu bar, and one global shortcut (⌘⇧Space by default; [app] shortcut in ~/.devplane/app.toml) that shows the topmost thing that needs you over whatever you are doing. Answer it, press Esc, and focus goes back. Closing the window keeps hosting; quitting from the tray says what it stops first. Nothing starts at login. See Install.
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