The workbench

Zeus is a three-pane machine. Learn the panes and the rest of the product falls into place.

Projects group sessions. Each row is one agent or shell: title, host badge, and a status mark. Click a row to focus it. ⌘1 through ⌘8 jump to the nth visible session. ⌘9 jumps to the last.

Useful moves:

New Agent at the top of the sidebar, or ⌘N, opens the composer.
Pin a project or session you always want at the top.
Collapse a lead session to hide its spawned children when the tree is loud.
Rename the selected session with ⌘R.
Archive with ⌘⇧W. Archived rows drop into the project's archive group. They stay as history. They are not the resume path.
Reorder a row inside its project with ⌃⌘↑ and ⌃⌘↓.
Needs you is ⌘⇧J. It walks sessions that are blocked on input.

The footer can show an Update to … pill. That is the only place an available update lives until you click it. See Updates.

Terminal

The center card is a real terminal, not a chat log. Copy and paste work as usual (⌘C / ⌘V). Find is ⌘F, then ⌘G / ⌘⇧G. Font size is ⌘+, ⌘-, and ⌘0, or Settings → Terminal.

⌘J opens a second, auxiliary shell under the same session. Use it for git, tests, or a one-off command without stealing the agent's PTY.

When a session belongs to a spawn family (a lead plus children), a compact tab strip sits above the terminal. Switch with the mouse or, in the tree view, with the arrow keys.

Tabs and the workflow tree

A family of spawned sessions can be shown two ways:

Tabs keep the terminal on screen and list the family as chips.
Tree replaces the terminal with the genealogy: each node is the agent's mark, a caption with the title and status, and rails to its children. A working node wears a spinner around the mark.

Open the tree from the Tabs / Tree control, or from the command palette (Agent Workflow Tree). In the tree: ↑ ↓ move, Return or a double-click opens that session's terminal, Esc returns to tabs.

Use tabs when you are in the conversation. Use the tree when you are conducting.

Inspector

⌘⇧D shows or hides it. Four tabs:

Tab	Job
Info	Session briefing: identity, attention, location, lifecycle, lineage, and runtime
Review	Git workspace for this checkout: repository header, branch picker, pull-request navigation, and the live diff. Stage and commit stay on the working tree
Code	Worktree-scoped Changed / All files tree and the existing file viewer. Word wrap is a Settings toggle
Artifacts	Ports the session opened, pull requests it mentioned, and other finds

Review is how Zeus earns the "accept the work" claim. Let the agent finish, then read the diff in the same window you used to watch it.

Code opens on Changed, using the same staged, working-tree, rename, conflict, and untracked status data as Review. Switch to All files to browse the selected local session's repository; directories load only when expanded, and Git-ignored entries stay out of the tree. Opening a path from Review, Quick Open, or a terminal reference reveals it in the tree and reuses the same viewer below it. ⌘⇧E opens Code and focuses the tree. Type to filter, use ↑ / ↓ to move, → / ← to expand or collapse, Return to open, and Esc or Tab to return focus to the viewer. Non-repository sessions can still use All files, while Changed explains that Git status is unavailable. Remote sessions remain view-only and are not browsed through the local filesystem.

Info answers the quick briefing questions for the selected session: what kind of agent it is, where it runs, whether it needs you, when it last completed a turn, whether a remote process can survive disconnect, and how it relates to parent, child, and ⌘J workbench sessions. Sleeping and ended sessions explain their lifecycle state and resumability. Paths, timestamps, and session IDs can be copied from the panel.

Info keeps Git to a one-shot working-tree summary that jumps to Review; it does not poll in the background, show pull-request content, or mutate the repository. Artifacts and listening ports are counts that jump to Artifacts. Installation- level usage remains in the account menu; Info only shows usage when Zeus can attribute it to the selected session.

Session overview

⌘⇧O (also Session Overview in the palette) is the board of every live session. Use it when the sidebar is a long list and you want a spatial scan. Click a card to jump.

History

⌘⇧H opens recent activity. It is the short-term memory of what this installation has been doing, not a search engine over every byte of scrollback.

Worktrees sheet

⌥⌘W lists git worktrees Zeus knows about, which session owns which, and which look stale enough to clean up. Cleanup is suggest-only: dirty, unmerged, or main-branch trees will not reach the confirm step. See Worktrees.

The Zeus extra in the macOS menu bar is a quiet radar. It shows how many sessions need you without stealing focus. Click it to pick a row and come back to the window.

Command palette and Quick Open

⌘K is the index of everything Zeus can start: new agents, new shells, "New Claude Code in this project", "New Codex on this host", move the selected Claude session, sync prefs, settings, docs, updates.

⌘P is the unified navigator. It searches files in the selected local session's project (or the first open project on the startup screen), every agent session, and indexed folders. Return opens a file in Code, switches to a session, or launches your default agent in a folder; ⌘Return launches a terminal for a folder result. Add extra folder search roots in Settings → General. Remote sessions still appear, but their files are not indexed through the local filesystem.

Layout

Settings → General → Projects sidebar on the right mirrors the chrome: sidebar on the trailing edge, inspector on the leading one. The terminal stays in the middle either way.

Zeus