Agent Desk

Unified control center for AI coding agents. Terminals, dashboards, and orchestration in one Electron app. Manage multiple Claude Code sessions, monitor agent status, and coordinate multi-agent workflows from a single window.

For a complete guide, see the User Manual.

Why

Running multiple AI agents means juggling terminals, losing track of which agent is doing what, and manually switching between dashboards. Agent Desk puts everything in one place:

| | Without Agent Desk | With Agent Desk | | ------------------- | ------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | | Terminals | Separate windows, no organization | Tabbed grid layout with splits | | Agent status | No visibility | Live monitor with status, cost, tasks | | Coordination | Manual, error-prone | Batch launcher, templates, comm graph | | Dashboards | Open 3 browser tabs | Embedded with health monitoring | | Search | Per-terminal only | Cross-terminal search across all buffers | | Session restore | Lost on close | Auto-save + restore with buffer replay |

Features

Terminal Management

• Multi-terminal with tabs, split views (horizontal/vertical), drag-and-drop reordering
• Dockview grid layout -- resize, maximize, and rearrange terminal panes freely
• Pop-out windows -- detach any terminal into its own native window
• Shell profiles -- Default Shell and Claude Code built-in; create custom profiles with command, args, env, cwd, and icon
• Shell integration -- OSC sequence parsing for current directory tracking and command boundary detection
• Inline rename -- double-click tab labels to rename terminals

Agent Intelligence

• Agent Detection -- auto-detects Claude Code sessions by parsing tool calls, file modifications, test results, and errors from terminal output
• Live tab indicators -- tab titles show agent name, current activity, and attention state (waiting on user, running, idle, errored)
• Lifecycle Controls -- interrupt (SIGINT), stop (SIGTERM), kill (SIGKILL), and restart agents from the context menu or tab buttons
• Cost Tracking -- per-agent token/cost estimation in the status bar with $2/$5 warning thresholds
• Terminal Chains -- trigger commands in one terminal when another exits or changes status

Multi-Agent Orchestration

• Batch Launcher (Ctrl+Shift+B) -- launch N agents at once with profile selection, naming patterns (agent-{n}), stagger delays, working directory, and initial commands
• Templates / Recipes -- save and load reusable multi-agent configurations; 2 built-in defaults (Quick Review: 3 agents, Parallel Tasks: 5 agents)
• Communication Graph -- canvas visualization of agent interactions fetched from the agent-comm API, with animated nodes and edge thickness by message count

Search

• Terminal Search (Ctrl+F) -- search within the active terminal buffer using xterm.js search addon
• Cross-Terminal Search (Ctrl+Shift+F) -- async chunked search across all terminal buffers with case-sensitive and regex options, keyboard navigation, and jump-to-line

Dashboard Integration

• Agent Comm (Ctrl+2) -- embedded agent-comm dashboard, mounted as a first-party plugin into a shadow DOM
• Agent Tasks (Ctrl+3) -- embedded agent-tasks pipeline kanban
• Agent Knowledge (Ctrl+4) -- embedded agent-knowledge dashboard with search and graph
• Agent Discover (Ctrl+5) -- embedded agent-discover MCP registry / marketplace
• Event Stream (Ctrl+6), Settings (Ctrl+7) -- native views
• Plugin system -- each agent-* package ships an agent-desk-plugin.json manifest. Agent Desk discovers them at startup and mounts them via a plugin:// protocol with theme + CSS variable sync into a per-view shadow root
• Dashboard Health -- 30-second health checks with auto-reconnect; sidebar status dots show service availability

Event System

• Event Stream (Ctrl+E) -- filterable timeline panel showing up to 200 events with expandable details, severity color coding, and JSON export
• Event Bus -- internal pub/sub system emitting terminal lifecycle, agent tool calls, file modifications, test results, errors, and chain triggers

Project-Centric Workspaces

• Workspaces (Ctrl+Shift+W / Ctrl+Alt+W) -- bundle a root folder, per-workspace env vars, color, agent selection, and pin state; opening spawns terminals for every configured agent
• Workspace switcher -- titlebar dropdown with pinned + recent workspaces; one-click open
• 24-color palette -- visual identity for tabs, sidebar accents, and switcher rows
• Session Persistence -- auto-save every 60 seconds; restore prompt on startup with 10-second countdown; buffer replay for terminal history
• Layout auto-save -- dockview grid state persisted automatically
• Migration -- pre-1.6 layout-only workspaces lift automatically to the new v2 shape on first read

Git Integration

• Read-only git sidebar -- branch, ahead/behind, per-file status (M/A/D/?/R/U), last commit; powered by simple-git with fs.watch on .git/HEAD + .git/index
• Diff viewer -- Shiki-highlighted dockview overlay with unified and side-by-side modes, j/k hunk navigation, Esc to close, o to open in external editor
• External editor handoff -- detects VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium on PATH; opens files via vscode://file/<path>:<line>:<col> URL scheme with --goto CLI fallback; context menu items on terminal tabs, agent cards, git file rows, and inside the diff viewer

Warp-inspired primitives (v1.7)

• Blocks (Ctrl+B) -- terminal output partitioned by OSC 133 into structured command blocks; collapsible cards with exit-code chip, elapsed time, and one-click rerun
• Diff-first edit review (Ctrl+Shift+R) -- Claude Code tool-call edits captured against git HEAD and presented in a review panel with approve / reject (reverts to HEAD) / comment
• Unified input bar (Ctrl+L) -- titlebar input with intent auto-detect: $ <cmd> pipes to focused terminal, /<name> opens command palette, plain text routes to focused Claude Code agent or configured provider (anthropic / openai / ollama / custom)
• Skills & Rules panel (Ctrl+8) -- browse and edit .claude/skills, .claude/hooks, .mcp.json, CLAUDE.md for the active workspace with path-contained saves
• Tab modality states -- colored dot per tab tracking idle / running / awaiting-input / edits-pending / errored; click to act (open review, focus terminal)

Appearance

• 4 built-in themes -- Default Dark, Default Light, Dracula, Nord; custom themes via the theme manager
• Custom themes -- full color customization including terminal ANSI colors, stored in localStorage
• MD3 design language -- consistent with agent-comm and agent-tasks dashboards
• System tray -- minimize to tray with context menu for quick terminal launch

Configuration

• 40+ settings -- terminal font/size/cursor/scrollback, dashboard URLs, sidebar position, close-to-tray, start-on-login, bell behavior, notifications
• Config file -- ~/.agent-desk/config.json persists settings, profiles, workspaces, and templates
• Keybinding customization -- ~/.agent-desk/keybindings.json for user overrides
• Config hot-reload -- file watcher triggers live updates on external config changes

Quick Start

Install from npm

npm install -g agent-desk
agent-desk

Or build from source

git clone https://github.com/keshrath/agent-desk.git
cd agent-desk
npm install
npm run build
npm run dev

Or download a binary

Pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux are available on the GitHub Releases page:

| Platform | Format | | -------- | ------------------ | | Windows | NSIS installer, Portable | | macOS | DMG | | Linux | AppImage, deb |

Keyboard Shortcuts

Terminals

| Shortcut | Action | | --------------- | --------------------- | | Ctrl+Shift+T | New terminal | | Ctrl+Shift+C | New Claude session | | Ctrl+W | Close terminal | | Ctrl+Tab | Next terminal | | Ctrl+Shift+Tab | Previous terminal | | Ctrl+Shift+D | Split right | | Ctrl+\ | Split right (alt) | | Ctrl+Shift+E | Split down | | Ctrl+Shift+M | Toggle maximize | | Ctrl+Shift+S | Save output to file | | Ctrl+F | Search in terminal | | Ctrl+Shift+F | Search all terminals |

Navigation

| Shortcut | Action | | ---------- | --------------------- | | Alt+Arrow | Focus adjacent pane | | Ctrl+1 | Terminals view | | Ctrl+2 | Agent Comm view | | Ctrl+3 | Agent Tasks view | | Ctrl+4 | Agent Knowledge view | | Ctrl+5 | Agent Discover view | | Ctrl+6 | Event Stream view | | Ctrl+7 | Settings view | | Ctrl+8 | Skills & Rules view | | Ctrl+B | Blocks panel | | Ctrl+Shift+R | Pending edits review | | Ctrl+L | Focus unified input |

General

| Shortcut | Action | | --------------- | ----------------------- | | Ctrl+Shift+P | Command palette | | Ctrl+P | Quick switcher | | F1 | Show keyboard shortcuts | | Ctrl+E | Toggle event stream | | Ctrl+Shift+B | Batch agent launcher | | Ctrl+Shift+W | Save workspace | | Ctrl+Alt+W | Load workspace | | Escape | Close overlays / search |

All shortcuts are customizable via Settings or ~/.agent-desk/keybindings.json.

Configuration

Config is stored at ~/.agent-desk/config.json and organized into sections:

| Section | Key Settings | | ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Terminal | fontSize, fontFamily, cursorStyle, cursorBlink, scrollback | | Shell | defaultShell, defaultTerminalCwd, defaultNewTerminalCommand | | Dashboard | agentCommUrl, agentTasksUrl, agentKnowledgeUrl | | Appearance | sidebarPosition, showStatusBar, tabCloseButton, theme | | Behavior | closeToTray, startOnLogin, newTerminalOnStartup | | Notifications| bellSound, bellVisual, desktopNotifications |

Documentation

• Setup Guide -- installation, configuration, shell integration
• Architecture -- process model, IPC, file structure
• Features -- detailed feature documentation
• Changelog
• Contributing

License

MIT -- see LICENSE