The window

Kule's desktop app is a window onto the Kule daemon, the background process that owns your tasks and the agents' runs (see When the window is closed). This page names every part of the window so the other pages can refer to them.

Mod on these pages means ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl on Linux and Windows.

First start

With no task yet, the window opens on a first-run screen titled A control room for your agents, with three steps:

1. Your agents. Kule checks which agents can start on this computer (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini and any you added) and, for those that cannot, says what to install. Claude Code and Codex need Node.js for npx; Gemini needs its own CLI. Sign each agent in once, in a terminal, the way you would without Kule: Kule's runs use that sign-in. See Agents.

2. How careful. Pick the policy for every task:

   • Balanced: changes to ordinary files pass on their own. What decides what gets installed, built or run (manifests, lockfiles, CI files, editor settings), git history rewrites and mass deletes wait for you.
   • Careful: every change to a file or to git waits for you. Only package registries, and each agent's own API while it runs, are reached without asking.

   You can change it later under Settings → Policy. See Policy.

3. A folder. Choose a folder… makes your first task on it.

Opened from the Finder or a launcher, the app reads PATH from your login shell, so agents find npx, node and the rest as they do in a terminal.

Regions and panels

The window has four regions: left, main, right and bottom. Each region holds panels as tabs.

Panel	What it shows	Default region
Tasks	Your tasks and groups. Needs you at the top collects the tasks waiting for an answer or an approval.	Left
Files	The task's copy as a tree, changed files marked. See Files and Preview.	Left
Review	What the task changed and what the policy says about it, with Commit and Roll back. See Review.	Main
Timeline	Commits, steps, network connections and sandbox refusals. See Timeline.	Main
Preview	One file of the copy, shown large. See Files and Preview.	Main
Agent (Live)	The conversation with the agent and the prompt line. See Live.	Bottom
Terminal	Your own shells in the copy, one tab each. See Terminals and servers.	Bottom

The right region is empty and hidden by default. By default the agent chat and the terminals share the bottom, side by side: Agent | zsh 1 | zsh 2 | +.

Moving and resizing

• Move a panel: drag its tab to another region, or use the tab's menu, or the keyboard.
• Resize a region: drag its edge. A side can grow until the middle keeps at least 360 × 160 pixels, so the main area never disappears between them.
• Show or hide a region: use the button at the end of its tab bar, the four switches at the right of the title bar, or the keys below. The bottom panel can fill the window. The main area and the bottom panel are never hidden together.
• Reset the layout: run Reset the layout from the command palette (Mod+K) to go back to Kule's own.

Show or hide	Keys
Left side	Mod+B
Bottom panel	Mod+J
Right side	Mod+Alt+B
Agent chat	Mod+Shift+J
Terminal	Ctrl+`
Main area	no default; give it one in Settings → Shortcuts

The layout is kept across restarts in layout.json in Kule's home (see Files and settings).

Title bar

At the top of the window:

• the window's title;
• Weaker isolation, an amber chip, while you have accepted weaker isolation on a Linux computer that cannot give agents all of theirs (see kule isolation);
• four layout switches for the left side, the main area, the bottom panel and the right side. On macOS these sit in the window's own title bar, as in VS Code.

The narrow bar on the far left holds Kule's mark and, at the bottom, the Settings gear (Mod+,).

Task header

Above the main area, the open task's header shows:

• the task's name and its folder;
• server chips such as localhost:5173 ↗ for servers working in its copy (see Terminals and servers);
• its state, such as "agent at work" or "3 changes · needs approval";
• what its runs have spent so far, as the agents reported it;
• a builds from chip when the folder builds from a project beside it that its tasks cannot read yet (see kule reveal).

The Tasks panel

• New task… (Mod+N) picks a folder and makes a task on it.
• Needs you lists tasks that wait for you: a question about a connection, or changes that need approval.
• Tasks lists every task and group. The + next to the title makes a group.
• Each task has a ⋮ menu (Mod+., or a right click): Rename…, a colour, Group…, Budget…, Limits…, Open terminal, Open the copy in an editor, Bring in the folder's changes, Fork task, Move up/Move down and Delete task. Items that would disturb a running agent say (agent at work) and wait.
• A group's ⋮ menu has Rename…, a colour, Budget…, Limits…, Move up/Move down and Delete group (its tasks stay, in no group).
• Drag a task to reorder it, or onto a group to put it there; drag it onto Not in a group to take it out. Alt+Shift+↑/↓ moves the current task (Alt+↑/↓ with the list focused). kule list keeps the same order.

Command palette

Mod+K opens the command palette. Every action of the window is there by name, with its shortcut, including the ones that have no default key. Type part of a name to find it. Mod+/ lists the shortcuts. See Keyboard.

Menu bar

File, Edit, View, Task and Help (with Kule and Window on macOS), at the top of the screen on macOS and at the top of the window on Linux and Windows. Every item runs the same command as its shortcut and shows the keys you set. Shortcuts that text editing owns too (⌘⌫, ⌥⇧↑) stay in the window, so they keep working in a text field.

When the window is closed

The window is a view onto the Kule daemon, which the app starts when none is running. The daemon owns the tasks, the agents' runs and the questions they wait on:

• Closing the window stops nothing. A run goes on, and its questions wait for their time.
• Reopening the window shows what happened meanwhile.
• The daemon exits after ten minutes with nothing going on.

Kule keeps everything in its home, ~/.kule (or KULE_HOME): tasks and their copies, settings, the policy and secrets. No sandbox can see it. See kule daemon and Files and settings.

From a terminal

The kule command works on the same tasks as the window. See the CLI reference, and kule list, kule new, kule name and kule color for what the Tasks panel does.