Organize & navigate

Long-running agent work produces a lot of conversation. These features keep it navigable.

Pin what matters

Projects, threads, and individual transcript messages can be pinned. Pinned messages live in the Environment panel next to editable, autosaving thread notes — a scratchpad that stays with the task.

Find text in the current conversation

Press mod+f to open the floating transcript search. Karmas Coder highlights matching message text, shows the active result and total count, and supports previous/next navigation without treating tool-only activity as conversation text.

Close the panel to remove its temporary highlights. Transcript search does not change messages or pinned content. Saved transcript highlights, underlines, and markers were removed in 0.8.4; pinned messages and thread notes remain available.

Recap long threads

The thread recap panel generates an in-place summary of a long chat and caches it. Useful before a handoff or when returning to a task after days away.

Split views

Drag a chat into a split pane to keep two tasks visible side by side — even across projects. Expanding a pane opens that chat full-screen.

Jump between surfaces

The recent-view switcher gives keyboard-first navigation through recent chats, terminals, and workspace surfaces, with keycap hints. Combined with the keyboard shortcuts, you rarely need the pointer.

The primary sidebar destinations can also be dragged into your preferred order. Karmas Coder keeps that order across windows and restarts while adding newly introduced destinations to a sensible default position.

Edit files beside the chat

The editor workspace opens a file tree and syntax-highlighted editor next to the conversation, and can move file references straight into prompts. For bigger edits, open-in launchers hand the project to VS Code, Cursor, Zed, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Ghostty, Terminal, and others.

The Explorer now edits files with syntax highlighting and a numbered plain-text fallback. Edits autosave after a short pause; Saved, Saving..., and Unsaved changes show the actual state. Use Save or mod+s to save immediately. See Workspace editor & diffs for conflicts, navigation, and review controls.

File preview updates

Open text, image, PDF, and diff views revalidate when workspace files change. Unsaved text edits are protected from background replacement. Check the task's checkout before treating an updated preview as evidence from a particular branch.

Choose Split diff or Stacked diff in Diff options. Karmas Coder remembers this choice when you reopen the panel and after an app restart. In 1.0.2 Stable and Beta, choices are independent per chat. Settings → Behavior → Diff layout supplies the default for chats without a saved choice; changing that default does not overwrite existing chat choices.

Read larger documents

Use Maximize panel on a file or Explorer pane to expand it across the workspace; Restore panel returns to the dock. Rendered Markdown resolves workspace wiki links such as [[notes/design]] and [[notes/design|Design notes]], adding .md when the target has no extension. Wiki links resolve from the workspace root. Heading and block wiki-link targets remain literal text.

Rename and retain your layout

Use /rename <title> for a direct title change or bare /rename to generate one from the conversation. The command reference explains empty drafts and concurrent title changes.

Expanded and collapsed sidebar projects remain saved after a restart. Read state is retained too. While a response streams, scrolling up keeps your position instead of letting unrelated tool activity pull you to the bottom.

Search files and source

Press mod+p to find workspace files by name. Press mod+shift+f for grep-style source search across the active project.

File results show the basename and parent path. Source results add the matching line number and excerpt. Choosing either result opens that file in the task's right-dock file pane, so search, Markdown file links, and the Explorer lead to the same review surface.

Search is scoped to the active workspace. If a result appears to come from the wrong checkout, verify the task's local or worktree environment before editing it.

Return to tasks created here

The Environment panel lists tasks created from the current task. Open a row to navigate to that task, including when it lives in another project. Its status reflects the child task; check the child transcript before treating completion as an integrated result.

Track local dev servers

The Environment panel can start, view, and stop tracked project dev servers, so the preview you are testing against is managed from the same place as the task. mod+shift+b toggles the browser preview, mod+d the diff panel.

Export a thread

In a saved, idle chat, run /export (or use the command menu) to download a ZIP containing thread.json and a readable transcript.md. Good for sharing a session, filing an issue, or archiving how a change was made.

Imported history and recent activity

Import projects brings local Codex and Claude Code conversations into Karmas Coder, including a replacement-folder choice for moved projects. Activity ordering follows the latest human message, so background assistant work does not continually promote untouched conversations.

Drag a chat into another pane to open a split view, or into the composer to add a chat mention. The command palette and recent-view switcher share the file picker's visual layout.

Rail and open chat tabs

The rail keeps main destinations in a compact icon column beside the thread panel. Customize the destinations and their order; edit a project's name, icon or emoji, and color from its controls.

Saved chats appear in the horizontal tab strip. Unsent drafts remain out of the strip until their first send. Use a tab's context menu for its available chat actions. Closing or switching a tab does not mean the agent has stopped; inspect the conversation's status separately.

Snooze a conversation

Use the thread's Snooze menu for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, tomorrow at 9am, or a custom future time. Tomorrow uses your local calendar. Snoozing postpones attention; it does not cancel a running turn.

The thread returns to recent activity at the deadline and uses your notification settings for a reminder. If Karmas Coder and its server were closed, overdue reminders recover when they restart. See Tasks and Inbox for managing the wider backlog.

In 1.0.0, snoozed chats are excluded from inactivity cleanup. Opening a returned chat marks it seen. Closing a split preserves the surviving chat, and closing the last open tab returns to the unsent draft.

Search saved message text in the palette

In 1.0.1-beta.2, mod+k searches settled user and assistant messages across saved chats, including chats not recently opened, alongside titles and project metadata. Results include short excerpts. Every distinct search word must match the message body; matching ignores ASCII letter case. Archived, deleted and subagent chats are excluded. The server returns at most 50 message hits.

The palette also offers navigation to available Inbox, Kanban/Tasks, Hubs and Automations destinations, New automation, and matching Settings sections and controls. Availability follows the current host and release channel.

Thread hover cards preview unsent draft text. Marking a chat Done offers an eight-second Undo toast; undoing the focused chat returns to it. On the per-project Kanban board, sendable draft cards offer Move to In Progress, using the same action as dragging. Derived columns and pending or unsendable drafts do not offer manual moves.

Source evidence: Karmas Coder 48603e869, the audited release head for 1.0.1-beta.2. apps/server/src/threadSearch.ts, apps/web/src/components/SidebarSearchPalette.tsx, apps/web/src/components/Sidebar.tsx, and apps/web/src/hooks/useSidebarThreadActions.ts.

For long conversations, see paged history and reload recovery. Provider-native child agents appear in Subagents.

Choose your chat header

In Stable 1.0.2 and Beta, Settings → General → Thread tabs controls whether the desktop single-pane chat header shows all open chats or only the current title. It is on by default. When shown, tabs keep readable widths and offer an overflow menu; split panes, mobile and the editor rail keep their existing header behavior.

Source evidence: apps/web/src/appSettings.ts, apps/web/src/routes/_chat.settings.tsx and apps/web/src/components/ChatView.tsx in the 1.0.2 release source.