Interactive shell

The interactive shell is Vibestrate’s second surface. Mission Control is the primary one; the shell is the terminal-native version of the same screens.

vibe            # with no arguments
vibe shell      # the same thing, named

It reads the same .vibestrate/ the dashboard does, so the two are always looking at one project.

1. Header. The brand, a “where am I” line, the numbered tab menu, and the current page’s subtitle.

2. Context and prompt. The mode · crew · flow line and the command prompt. The border brightens to cyan while the prompt has focus. It sits above the body on purpose: the autocomplete list shrinks the body, never the prompt, so the line you are typing on never moves.

3. Body. The active page on the left, the COMMANDS panel on the right, plus the global keys. Command output takes that pane instead. The body clips to the fixed canvas rather than scrolling the terminal.

The shell draws inline: it renders where your cursor is and leaves what was above it alone, so your scrollback survives and the last frame is still readable after you quit. On a large window that means a compact app with unused terminal below it.

vibe shell --full-screen draws in the terminal’s alternate buffer instead, filling the window the way less or vim do, and restores your screen on the way out.

Whatever happens, the terminal is handed back. The restore is armed on a normal exit, on a crash, and on Ctrl+C or a kill signal, because a shell that exits still in the alternate buffer has hidden your scrollback - worse than any layout it was fixing.

Ten pages carry a number key, in this order:

1 Dashboard   4 Profiles   7 Suggestions   0 Doctor
2 Flow        5 Runs       8 Skills
3 Crew        6 Approvals  9 Roadmap

Three more - Notifs, Config and Consult - have no number key and open from the : palette.

Each mirrors a dashboard surface, read live from .vibestrate/:

• Dashboard is the live overview: active runs, queue depth, the attention inbox, recent activity.
• Runs puts the scheduler queue strip - what is queued, what is running - above every run, active and finished. The strip is read-only; drive the queue from the : palette or vibe queue.
• Roadmap is the kanban backlog, where work begins: n for a new task, Enter or r to run one, Q to enqueue it.
• Flow forks a builtin into your project (f), sets the project default (Enter), or installs one from the hub (h).
• Profiles cycles a profile’s model and effort in place (m/M, e/E).
• Approvals and Suggestions are the two inboxes: a approves, r rejects.
• Doctor re-runs the diagnostics (r) and applies the safe fixes (f).

The COMMANDS panel changes with the page:

Runs      p pause · r resume · a abort · R re-run
Roadmap   e edit · n new · d delete · Q queue

Single-key, and active when the prompt is not focused.

1-9 / 0   switch pages
:         the command palette
Esc       back to the previous page
d         the in-terminal docs browser
b / B     Mission Control in your browser
m         toggle write / read-only mode
c / f     pick the session's crew / flow
?         context-sensitive help
q         quit

The command palette fuzzy-searches every action.

A context strip sits at the top at all times: where you are, and what the next run will do.

• project and branch. A ⑂ worktree badge appears inside a linked git worktree rather than the primary checkout.
• mode. The posture the next run will use: write, or read-only, which adds --read-only. Press m.
• activity. idle, running · N active, with a · N queued suffix when the scheduler has work waiting.
• approvals. A yellow ⏳ N approvals chip, only when runs are blocked on you, so a decision you owe is visible from any page.
• budget. Today’s spend against budget.spendCapDailyUsd: grey under the warn threshold, yellow past it, red once exceeded. With no cap, today’s spend alone, and nothing while that is $0. Real cost where the CLI reports it, estimated otherwise, a few seconds behind live.
• crew and flow. The session’s selections, seeding the next run you launch from the prompt. Until you pick, the run falls back to the project’s defaultCrew and defaultFlow; defaultFlow is unset by default, so the orchestrator chooses per task.
• task. The task text of the most-recently-active run.

Press i (or !) to focus it, type a vibe … command, press Enter. Output streams in place. Esc returns to navigation, ↑ / ↓ walk command history.

The line moves like a terminal: Option+←/→ by word, Ctrl+→ / End / Ctrl+E to the end, Ctrl+← / Home / Ctrl+A to the start.

A run … command from the prompt is seeded with your session selections - --crew, --flow, --read-only - to match the status bar. Anything you type explicitly wins.

A ghost list opens under the prompt with what fits the token at the cursor, read from the real CLI tree plus your project’s live ids, so it cannot drift. It sits in a fixed-height slot and never resizes the panel.

A word completes subcommands, a dash flags, a value-taking flag its values, an id-typed argument live ids from your project:

config             view show get set keys validate
config show -      --json
--effort           low | medium | high
--effort=hi        --effort=high
--crew --flow      your crew and flow ids
--profile --task   your profile and task ids
replay             your run ids
tasks show         task ids
flows show         flow ids

Free-text arguments, like a run "…" description, never complete.

Tab accepts the highlighted candidate, ↑ / ↓ move the selection, Esc dismisses the list. History stays on ↑ / ↓ while the prompt is empty.

For config set and config get the list enumerates every settable key from the schema, with its current value inline and a one-line description of the highlighted key beneath, taken from the schema’s own field docs - the source the published config reference uses.

▸ vibe config set git.▌
    › git.mainBranch             = main
      git.branchPrefix           = vibestrate/
      git.snapshotRetentionRuns  = 0
    Name of the main/trunk branch (default main).
    ⇥ complete · ↑↓ select · esc dismiss

Output streams into a scrollable pane on the right, not the prompt, so a long --help or status dump stays readable. The pane follows the tail; while the prompt is focused, Tab / Shift+Tab scroll it. It is narrow and truncates, so output past 16 lines or 64 columns opens the full-width view automatically. O toggles it yourself, Esc collapses back.

Press d (or : → “Browse docs”) for the docs in-terminal: a topic list on the left, the selected page in terminal Markdown on the right. These are the same pages published on the docs site, bundled with the CLI.

↑ / ↓  or  j / k   scroll the page
Space / b          page down / up
[ / ]              switch topic
o                  open the docs website
Esc                close