The terminal app

The terminal app

cm with no command opens the workspace on the first card — Notes, on a fresh server. There is a card per installed Quill, on the shelf of its catalog category — PERSONAL, HOME, BUSINESS, DEVELOPER, in the catalog's order — and fewer when one of them is switched off, by the server for everybody or by you in Settings, since a tab follows its feature.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Notes  Tasks  Files  Calendar  Chat  Secrets             │
├─────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ default   3 │ verticore                                  │
│ home      8 │ [New vault ^n] [Add a] [Reveal v] [Copy c] …│
│▎verticore 5 │ [local 3] [production 2] [＋]              │
│             │ ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│             │ │ key        value    len  updated       │ │
│             │ │ API_URL    ••••••   21   2026-09-10    │ │
└─────────────┴─┴────────────────────────────────────────┴─┘

A vault is not a frame the rest of the app hangs inside — it is an item in a list, laid out like notes: the list on the left, what you picked on the right. One vault to a line, its name dotted out if the column is too narrow for it, and how many secrets it holds at the end of the row. A vault you have just named is a row before it holds anything, so there is somewhere to stand while you add the first key.

Picking a vault shows it in the pane, and nowhere else. There is no selected vault in the top bar, nothing else changes with it, and the CLI's own default vault is left alone. (The pane is the kit's grouped list, so the same layout draws any Quill's list with a group and subgroup.)

Machines are not a tab: the agents enrol themselves at sign-in and get on with it, cm agent lists them and their jobs, and what they have done is behind the bell.

Files is a Quill card (f5): My Files and your shares in a table — which of them is mounted on this machine and where, and the buttons that make, mount, unmount and remove one — and enter opens one. See Fileshares.

It is meant to be used with a mouse: the tabs, the sub-tabs, the buttons above each pane, the rows in every table, the vaults in the list and the notes in the tree are all click targets, and every one of them has a key as well. Sweeping the pointer across text selects it, and selecting is copying: the moment the button comes up, what was swept is on the clipboard and a toast says so. There is no copy step to find, because a terminal has no menu to find it in. In the editor the copy is what is on screen — the line being edited as source, every other line as it renders. Escape clears the highlight. Tables, lists and the note tree are not sweepable; a row there is something you pick, and the buttons beside it copy what a row has to copy. Neither way is the real one, so the key is written on the thing it works — Notes f1 in the strip, ⚙ Settings ^g, 🔔 f8 — and the bar along the bottom carries a few of the rest: status on the left, at most five keys on the right, the focused thing's first and quit last.

Keys

Anywhere:

key	action
f1 … f7	notes, tasks (f2), secrets, files, calendar; the other Quills take f4, f10, f11, f12 in turn — Channels is f4
f8	notifications: what the machines have been up to
f9	administration (administrators): users, features, circles, Quills
ctrl+g	settings: your switches, and this machine
ctrl+r	refresh
ctrl+c	quit — pressed twice; the first press asks in the bottom bar

In secrets — the vault list:

key	action
n	new vault

In secrets — the keys:

key	action
ctrl+n	add a secret in the vault and environment on screen
enter	open it: key, value (hidden; ctrl+r shows it), vault, environment
v	reveal the selected value, or hide it again
c	copy it to the clipboard without showing it
del	delete it
e	work in another environment

Importing and exporting .env files are cm secret import and export.

In files:

key	action
1 / 2	its own tabs: local backups, fileshares
ctrl+n	new share
m / u	mount the selected share on this machine / unmount it
c	copy its WebDAV address
d	remove it (its files stay on the server)

In an editor (Notes, and any Quill drawn by the kit's editor) — the tree:

key	action
n / N	new page / new folder (inside the selected folder)
r	rename or move
d	delete
/	search

In an editor — anywhere:

key	action
ctrl+s	save now
ctrl+n / ctrl+o	new page / new folder
ctrl+f	search
f6 / f7	import a file / export the open page
ctrl+p	put a picture from this machine in the page

In the editor's text:

key	action
enter	new line, continuing the list you are in
ctrl+t	make a task, or tick/untick it
ctrl+k / ctrl+d	cut line / duplicate line
alt+↑ / alt+↓	move the line
ctrl+z / ctrl+y	undo / redo
tab / shift+tab	indent / dedent

In any dialog:

key	action
← → ↑ ↓	move between the buttons
enter	press the one you are on
escape	leave without answering

The arrows reach the dialog only when what has focus has no use for them, so the cursor still moves in an input and the selection still moves in a list.