Keyboard shortcuts¶

Audience. Daily user.

At a glance¶

Area	Count	Configurable?
Application menu (File / View)	14	no
Dashboard global	3	no
Project cards	6	no
Note modal	4	no
Terminal — pane	3	yes (`[terminal]`)
Terminal — xterm	4	no

The OS menu bar carries every system-level shortcut. Each item also dispatches an internal MenuCommand (see src/shared/api.ts MenuCommand) so the renderer can hook the same intent without going through the menu.

Menu	Item	Shortcut	What it does
File	Open…	`Ctrl+O` / `Cmd+O`	Reopen the conception folder picker.
File	Open conception directory	—	Reveal the current conception in the OS file manager.
File	Settings	`Ctrl+,` / `Cmd+,`	Open the Settings modal.
File	Search…	`Ctrl+Shift+F` / `Cmd+Shift+F`	Open the global search modal.
File	New project…	`Ctrl+N` / `Cmd+N`	Open the new-project modal.
File	Quit	(no accelerator)	Trigger the quit-confirm flow.
View	Show Projects	—	Toggle the Projects pane on the left edge.
View	Show Code	`Ctrl+Shift+C` / `Cmd+Shift+C`	Show the Code pane in the working slot.
View	Show Knowledge	`Ctrl+Shift+K` / `Cmd+Shift+K`	Show the Knowledge pane in the working slot.
View	Show Resources	`Ctrl+R` / `Cmd+R`	Show the Resources pane in the working slot.
View	Show Skills	`Ctrl+L` / `Cmd+L`	Show the Skills pane in the working slot.
View	Show Logs	`Ctrl+Shift+L` / `Cmd+Shift+L`	Show the Logs pane (per-session terminal log viewer) in the working slot.
View	Hide working surface	—	Hide whichever pane (Code / Knowledge / Resources / Skills / Logs) is in the working slot.
View	Show Terminal	Ctrl+` / Cmd+`	Toggle the Terminal pane at the bottom.
View	Refresh	`F5`	Drop the git-status TTL cache and re-read every list.
View	Reload window	`Ctrl+Shift+R` / `Cmd+Shift+R`	Reload the renderer (browser-style hard reload). The bare `Ctrl+R` slot is taken by Show Resources.
Help	About / Welcome / Quick start / …	—	Open the matching `docs/` page in the in-app Help modal.

The View toggles round-trip through getLayout / setLayout — see Config files — LayoutState. The visible state is kept in sync with the menu's checkbox items.

Dashboard global¶

Shortcut	Action	Configurable
`Ctrl+K` / `Cmd+K`	Open the global search modal (same effect as `Ctrl+Shift+F`).	no
`Escape`	Close the topmost modal	no
`?`	Toggle the keyboard-shortcut cheat-sheet overlay	no

Item focus and pane switching are pointer-driven — there is no "switch pane" shortcut. The search modal takes over the keyboard once it opens.

Project cards¶

Each project card in the Projects pane is keyboard-focusable. Tab into a card (or click it once), then drive its status with the digit shortcuts. The focus ring shows which card the next keypress will affect.

Shortcut	Action
`Tab` / `Shift+Tab`	Move focus between cards (and other focusable elements).
`Ctrl+1` / `Cmd+1`	Set the focused card's status to `now`.
`Ctrl+2` / `Cmd+2`	Set the focused card's status to `review`.
`Ctrl+3` / `Cmd+3`	Set the focused card's status to `later`.
`Ctrl+4` / `Cmd+4`	Set the focused card's status to `backlog`.
`Ctrl+5` / `Cmd+5`	Set the focused card's status to `done`.

The digit-to-status mapping follows KNOWN_STATUSES in src/shared/types/project.ts — 1..N maps to position 0..N-1. Pressing a digit equal to the card's current status is a no-op.

The shortcut yields to text inputs, textareas, contenteditable surfaces, the embedded xterm, and the CodeMirror editor — typing Ctrl+1 in the search modal or in a note's edit pane never steals it from the focused element.

Status changes via the keyboard go through the same setStatus mutation as the drag-drop path, so they fire the timeline Closed. / Reopened. entries on done-edges and surface the same out-of-tree branch warning when the project's worktree disagrees with the new status.

Active whenever a note preview (.note-modal.open) is on screen. Handled at capture phase so xterm / CodeMirror can't swallow them.

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+F` / `Cmd+F`	Open the in-note Find bar (view mode only — edit mode falls through to the browser's native find)
`Ctrl+E` / `Cmd+E`	Toggle between view and the last-used edit mode
`Escape`	Close the Find bar if open, else close the modal
`Enter` / `Shift+Enter` / `F3`	Step to next / previous match (when the Find bar is focused)

Inside the CodeMirror edit pane:

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+S` / `Cmd+S`	Save (atomic overwrite via `POST /note`). Refuses if the file has drifted on disk.

Embedded terminal — pane-level¶

These live at the dashboard level and can fire from outside the terminal pane (e.g. toggle it open from anywhere). Configurable via the terminal: block in settings.json (preferred, per-machine) or .condash/settings.json (tree default). Shortcut strings follow the KeyboardEvent.key convention — modifiers are Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Meta.

Default	Action	Config key
Ctrl+`	Toggle the terminal pane	`terminal.shortcut`
`Ctrl+Shift+V`	Paste the path of the newest screenshot (see below)	`terminal.screenshot_paste_shortcut`
`Ctrl+Left`	Move the active tab to the left pane	`terminal.move_tab_left_shortcut`
`Ctrl+Right`	Move the active tab to the right pane	`terminal.move_tab_right_shortcut`

Shortcut spec grammar:

shortcut      := modifier+ key
modifier      := "Ctrl" | "Shift" | "Alt" | "Meta"
key           := single char | KeyboardEvent.key name (e.g. "Enter", "`")

All parts are joined with +. Examples: Ctrl+T, Ctrl+Shift+F, Alt+1, Ctrl+`.

The toggle shortcut is intercepted both at the document level and inside xterm's own keydown listener — otherwise a focused terminal would swallow it. Same for screenshot-paste and the move-tab shortcuts.

Screenshot-paste flow¶

When terminal.screenshot_paste_shortcut fires:

Server-side: GET /recent-screenshot scans terminal.screenshot_dir for the newest image file (by mtime).
Client-side: the returned path is pasted into the active terminal tab — no Enter appended. User confirms.
If the directory is missing or empty, a transient toast surfaces the reason.

See using the embedded terminal.

Embedded terminal — xterm-level¶

These live inside xterm's attachCustomKeyEventHandler and only fire while a terminal tab has focus. Not configurable — they match GNOME Terminal / Ghostty conventions.

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+C`	Copy the selection if there is one; otherwise send `SIGINT` to the foreground process.
`Ctrl+Shift+C`	Always copy (no-op with no selection).
`Ctrl+V`	Paste from the system clipboard. The clipboard is read in the main process (`clipboardReadText` IPC) and fed through `term.paste()`, which applies bracketed-paste wrapping when the program has that mode on.
`Ctrl+Shift+V`	Paste the path of the newest screenshot — intercepted by the screenshot-paste handler unless rebound.
`Ctrl+F`	Open the in-tab search bar (xterm search addon). `Esc` closes it.
`Ctrl+Up` / `Ctrl+Down`	Jump to the previous / next OSC 133 prompt boundary in the active tab. Requires the shell integration snippet; without it, the keys fall through to the shell.
`Ctrl+Left` / `Ctrl+Right`	Same as the pane-level move-tab shortcuts — intercepted here because xterm consumes arrow keys.

Copy writes the system clipboard through the browser's native navigator.clipboard API. Paste reads it through the clipboardReadText IPC (main-process Electron clipboard), because navigator.clipboard.readText() is permission-gated and unreliable in the renderer. There is no HTTP endpoint.

Input focus rules¶

The pane-level shortcuts skip keystrokes where all of the following are true:

The event target is an <input>, <textarea>, or contenteditable element.
The shortcut has no non-shift modifier (so a bare Tab or single-letter key in an input never steals focus).

This keeps Ctrl+` from firing while you're typing in the search modal, but lets Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+` still work everywhere because they carry a modifier.

Reloading shortcut changes¶

terminal shortcut changes saved via the gear modal take effect live — chokidar fires a config event, the renderer reloads the parsed shortcut specs. No restart needed. Changes made by hand-editing .condash/settings.json or settings.json likewise re-render via the watcher; only workspace_path / worktrees_path / the repositories list need an actual restart.