Split panes & terminal features

An open card or shell is a full terminal. You can split it into up to four panes, zoom one, search its output, jump between prompts, copy a command's output, and see images and links. This page covers each feature.

Split panes

A card or shell open at full size shows 1 to 4 panes, side by side or stacked. The first is its main pane: the card's own terminal, which runs its startup command and is the one the board shows. Every other pane is an extra pane: a plain login shell with no startup command.

• Split right (⌘D / Ctrl+Shift+D) puts a new pane to the right of the focused pane; Split down (⇧⌘D / Ctrl+Shift+E) puts it below. Both are also buttons in the title bar and rows in the command palette.
• Splitting divides the focused pane into two equal halves, and the new pane gets the focus. Splits nest, in either direction, up to four panes. You can split only while the card runs.
• Click a pane to focus it. With more than one pane, the focused one has an outline.

Where an extra pane starts

A new pane starts in the directory the focused pane's shell last reported through shell integration, so after a cd in one pane, its split opens there too. When nothing was reported, or that directory is gone, it starts in the card's own directory. The card's directory itself never changes.

Every extra pane can run board for its card, so board status . works from any pane. In an SSH card, each extra pane is its own ssh session to the card's host and folder.

Close a pane

• Click the × in an extra pane's top-right corner, or press ⌘W / Ctrl+Shift+W with it focused. Its shell is stopped at once, without asking, and its neighbour takes the space.
• An extra pane whose shell exits (exit) is removed the same way.
• In the main pane, the × and ⌘W / Ctrl+Shift+W close the whole card, after asking (see Cards).

Extra panes live and die with the main pane: when the card stops, is closed or is deleted, they are stopped and discarded. ⇧⌘B / Ctrl+Shift+B leaves every pane running, and opening the card again shows the same layout. Panes are never saved: after a restart, a card has only its main pane.

Zoom a pane

⇧⌘Enter / Ctrl+Shift+Enter (default shortcut) shows only the focused pane, filling the view; the other panes keep running behind it. A chip in its top-left corner reads, for example, Zoomed · 3 panes: click it, or press the shortcut again, to show all panes again.

Splitting, closing the zoomed pane or the card stopping also end the zoom. Find, Back and the side panel don't. Zoom pane is in the command palette while the view has more than one pane.

Find

⌘F / Ctrl+Shift+F (default shortcut) opens a find bar in the top-right corner of the focused pane. It searches the pane's whole output, scrollback included, as you type, starting from the newest output.

The bar counts the matches as 2 of 15, from the newest one, or reads No results, Invalid regex or More than 1,000. Every match is outlined in amber and the current one filled. Pressing Find again with another pane focused moves the bar there, keeping the query.

Bikube remembers the last query and toggles until it quits, for every card and pane, so you can search the same error in several agents' cards. Find's selection never goes to the clipboard, even with Copy on select on.

Shell integration

Bikube starts local zsh, bash and fish shells with small integration scripts. They mark each prompt and command in the output and report the shell's directory, without changing your prompt, history or dotfiles. Other shells start as they are, and marks any shell sends itself (OSC 133, VS Code's OSC 633 and OSC 7), over SSH too, are used as well.

With those marks, a terminal knows its commands:

• Failed commands are marked: a command that exits with a code other than 0 gets a red bar at the left edge of its line and a ✗ 1 badge at the right edge (tooltip Exit code 1).
• Long commands notify you: when a command that ran 10 seconds or more ends in a pane you aren't looking at, Bikube sends a notification, Command finished · <workspace> or Command failed (exit 2) · <workspace>, with Notifications on in Settings. Clicking it opens the card and focuses that pane.
• Jump between prompts: ⌘↑ / Ctrl+Shift+ArrowUp (default shortcut) scrolls the focused pane up to the previous prompt, and ⌘↓ / Ctrl+Shift+ArrowDown down to the next one.
• Copy a command's output: ⇧⌘A / Ctrl+Shift+A (default shortcut) selects the output of the last finished command and copies it to the clipboard. Scrolled up, it takes the command whose prompt is in view, so jump to a prompt first to copy that command's output. It is also in the command palette.
• New splits start in the directory the shell reported (see above).

Turn it off with Shell integration in Settings, Terminal (on by default); it applies to terminals started from then on.

Inline images

Programs that print sixel or iTerm2 inline images (such as chafa, timg or imgcat) show them in the terminal, local or over SSH. Images scroll with the text and go when they leave the scrollback; each terminal keeps up to 32 MB of them, dropping the oldest. The Kitty graphics protocol isn't supported.

Images are never kept: a card's kept output is text only. Turn them off with Inline images in Settings, Terminal (on by default); it applies to terminals created from then on.

Links

Web addresses in a terminal's output, and links that programs print as hyperlinks, are underlined when you hover them. Cmd+click on macOS, or Ctrl+click on Linux, opens one in your default browser; a plain click still selects text. Only http and https links open.

A local card's dev server chips open localhost addresses with a plain click.

Copy, paste and keys

• Copy and Paste are ⌘C / Ctrl+Shift+C and ⌘V / Ctrl+Shift+V, so Ctrl+C stays the interrupt on Linux. Copy on select in Settings, Terminal copies every selection (off by default).
• Paste a screenshot into Claude Code with the same Paste shortcut: when the clipboard holds an image and no text, Bikube passes it on to Claude Code, which attaches it.
• Shift+Enter starts a new line in Claude Code's prompt instead of sending it, in any pane where Claude Code runs.
• Option as Meta (macOS only, in Settings, Terminal; off by default) makes Option+B, Option+F and Alt shortcuts reach the shell instead of typing special characters.

None of Bikube's shortcuts ever reaches the shell: the terminal gets every other key.

Prompt icons

Prompts that use Nerd Font glyphs, such as Starship, Powerlevel10k or oh-my-posh themes, show their icons with any terminal font: Bikube bundles the Symbols Nerd Font as a fallback, so there is nothing to install.