Cards

Every card on the board is a task with a live terminal: a real login shell in which Bikube starts the card's agent. This page covers creating, opening, moving, closing and deleting cards, what their statuses mean, and everything a card shows on the board.

Create a card

Click + New card at the bottom of a column (in the grid, above the cards), or pick New card in the command palette. The New card dialog says which column it adds to.

Create (or Enter in the Title field, or Cmd+Enter on macOS and Ctrl+Enter on Linux anywhere in the dialog) adds the card at the bottom of the column and opens it, which starts it. Esc or Cancel creates nothing.

Agents can create cards too, in this workspace or another, with board create; see The board command.

Open a card

Click a card, or focus it and press Enter, to open it at full size: its terminal fills the main area, with the side panel beside it (see Side panel & files). The title bar reads the workspace's name, then the card's agent and title. Opening a stopped card starts it again with its startup command, which resumes its agent's session (see Agents & resume).

Inside an open card you can split it into up to four panes, search its output and more: see Split panes & terminal features. To watch it beside another card, open it in its own window: see Card windows.

To go back to the board, press ⇧⌘B / Ctrl+Shift+B (default shortcut) or click the workspace's name in the title bar. The card keeps running.

Move cards

Moving a card between columns or within one never stops its process: an agent keeps working wherever its card goes.

• Drag a card to another place in its column or to another column; a line shows where it will land.
• From the keyboard, focus a card (Tab to it) and press ⌥↑ / Alt+ArrowUp or ⌥↓ / Alt+ArrowDown to move it one place in its column, or ⌥← / Alt+ArrowLeft or ⌥→ / Alt+ArrowRight to move it to the bottom of the previous or next column.
• From its menu, pick a column under Move to to move it to the bottom of that column.
• From the command palette, while the card is open: Move card to a column.
• From the terminal, with board move; or let the workspace's automatic moves do it.

In the grid view cards keep their columns but can't be moved between them; see Views.

Statuses

A card's status says what its process is doing. It is shown on the card while the card isn't running, and in the command palette.

While an Own worktree card runs its workspace's Worktree setup, it shows Setting up, or Setup failed if the setup command fails; see Worktrees & git.

What a card shows

From top to bottom, a card on the board can show:

• its agent's logo, large and faint behind the card, in the agent's colour;
• the status icon while it runs (a green dot, or a spinner, bell or question mark for its agent's activity), then its title;
• a document icon when it has a description; its tooltip shows the description's first lines;
• the New mark when an agent in another workspace created it (see below);
• its branch when it has its own worktree, or Worktree on first open for a pending one;
• its status when it isn't running (Stopped, SSH failed…), and the In window chip while it is open in its own card window;
• its agent status, a short line the agent writes about its progress (up to two lines; the full text in its tooltip). When the card stops, its last agent status stays, dimmed;
• the last line of its output, in the terminal font;
• the context bar of a Claude Code card (see below);
• dev server chips and, for a worktree card, its pull request chip.

Hover a card to see when it was created and when you last opened it on this machine, such as Created 27 Oct 2026, 14:05 · Opened 3 h ago. A running card also has a square Close button.

Dev server chips

When a running local card's output shows a dev server address (an http or https URL on localhost, 127.0.0.1, 0.0.0.0 or [::1] with a port, such as http://localhost:5173), the card shows a localhost:5173 chip for as long as something listens on that port. Click the chip to open the address in your default browser; the card stays as it is. Up to three chips show, then +N. Chips are forgotten when the card's shell stops or restarts, and SSH cards have none, since their localhost is the remote host.

The context bar

A local Claude Code card shows how full its conversation's context window is, as a thin bar and a percentage such as 42% context. Hover it for the tokens used of the window, and the input, output, cache write and cache read tokens and the model. Bikube estimates no cost. The bar stays after the card stops and goes when the conversation is cleared with /clear or the card is deleted. Other agents and SSH cards have none. See Activity & status.

The New mark

A card that an agent created from another workspace with board create --workspace shows a New mark (its tooltip reads Added from another workspace; opening it clears this), so you notice work that arrived while you were elsewhere. Opening the card on any machine clears it. Cards you create yourself, or that an agent creates in its own workspace, get none.

Close, Back and Delete

Three actions take a card out of view, and they do very different things:

Close a card

Close a running card from its menu (Close), its square Close button on the board, or ⇧⌘W / Ctrl+Shift+Q while it is open (⌘W / Ctrl+Shift+W also closes it from its main pane). Bikube asks first: Close "<title>"? Its terminal will be stopped. Open the card again to start it with its startup command.

Check Don't ask again in that dialog to close cards without asking from then on. To be asked again, turn Ask before closing a card back on in Settings, Terminal.

Delete a card

Pick Delete in the card's menu. A card that isn't running is removed at once; a running one asks first (Its terminal is still running and will be stopped). Deleting an Own worktree card asks whether to remove its worktree too; see Worktrees & git.

Kept output

When a card's shell stops (it exits, is closed or its ssh fails) and when you quit Bikube, Bikube saves the output of the card's main pane, with its colours, on this machine. When the card starts again, that output is shown first, read-only, above a dim line such as ── Previous output · 28 Oct 2026, 14:05 ──, with the new session below it. History accumulates across starts, up to the Scrollback setting's lines and 1,000,000 characters.

Kept output is never synced and never saved for extra panes or shells. It is removed when you delete the card. To turn it off, and remove all of it, turn off Keep output after a card stops in Settings, Terminal (on by default). See Where Bikube stores its data.

The card menu

Each card's ⋯ menu holds these actions; some show only when they apply.

The worktree items are explained in Worktrees & git.