Terminals
This page shows you the three places By Dawn gives you a terminal, and when to use each one. By the end you’ll be able to open a shell on any machine your organization has paired, answer an agent that’s waiting on you without leaving the board, and type straight into the session an agent is running.
- Terminals is a workbench for your own shells, on your computer or a paired machine.
- A ticket’s Terminal view is the live session of the agent working that ticket.
- The quick terminal opens that same session from the board, for a quick answer.
Terminals only appear where By Dawn can reach a machine to run them. The desktop app always can. Shortcuts below are written for a Mac; on Windows and Linux use Ctrl where it says ⌘.
The Terminals screen
Section titled “The Terminals screen”Choose Terminals in the sidebar, or press ⌘3. Each project has its own.
The screen opens with No ad-hoc terminals until you start one. Choose New terminal (⌘T) for a shell on the machine By Dawn picks for you, usually your own computer. To pick the machine yourself, open the arrow beside the button: New terminal on… lists This machine and each paired machine, with whether it’s online. A machine with no Claude account signed in is marked, because a terminal there will hit Claude’s login prompt (see Claude accounts, sign-in and seats).
In a web browser, ⌘T and ⌘W already belong to the browser, so By Dawn uses ⌘⌥T and ⌘⌥W instead. The button shows whichever applies.
Lay out your panes
Section titled “Lay out your panes”A pane holds one or more tabs. Split the screen to see several at once:
| To | Choose | Or press |
|---|---|---|
| Open a pane beside this one | Split | ⌘D |
| Open a pane below this one | Stack | ⌘⇧D |
| Pick a layout | Pane layout: Single, Columns, Rows, Grid 2×2 or Main + side | |
| Fill the screen with one pane | Maximize focused pane | ⌘Enter |
| Move between panes | ⌥⌘← and the other arrows | |
| Move between tabs | ⌘] and ⌘[ | |
| Rename a tab | ⌘⇧R | |
| Change the font size | Increase font, Decrease font, Reset font | ⌘+, ⌘−, ⌘0 |
Besides shells, a pane can hold an Agent browser (⌘⇧B), and in the desktop app a Preview
(⌘⇧V) of a page your code is serving, such as localhost:5173.
While a terminal has the keyboard, CtrlD, CtrlC and the other Ctrl keys go to the shell, as you’d expect. The ⌘ shortcuts still reach By Dawn.
What the dots mean
Section titled “What the dots mean”Each tab has a dot: running, exit 0 (it finished cleanly), exit ≠0 (it failed), idle or offline (its machine can’t be reached). The legend in the toolbar is there to remind you.
Close, hide and reopen
Section titled “Close, hide and reopen”Closing a tab does what’s safe for where it runs:
- A shell on your computer asks Kill terminal on …? first, because closing it ends the process.
- A shell on another machine is only hidden, so a long job keeps running. By Dawn tells you Hidden, not killed. To end it, open the tab’s menu and choose Kill.
- A shell that has already ended just moves out of the way.
Hidden and ended shells collect under the background button in the toolbar. Choose one to Reopen it, or Clear finished to tidy the list.
You can drop a file on a terminal to send it to that machine.
Ticket terminals
Section titled “Ticket terminals”The agents’ own sessions live in their tickets, so the Terminals screen leaves them out and says how many are running, such as “2 ticket terminals running”. In the desktop app, turn on Include ticket terminals to show them here too.
A ticket’s terminal
Section titled “A ticket’s terminal”Open a ticket and choose Terminal in its row of views. This is the live session of the agent working the ticket. Everything it types and everything it’s shown appears here, and you can type into it, for example to answer a question in the agent’s own prompt.
Feed shows the same session as a conversation, which is easier to read. Use Split to see the two side by side. Switching views never starts or stops anything: they’re all views of the one session.
Processes lists what’s running under the session and what it costs, while the agent is running. To hand the agent a file, drop it on the ticket’s terminal.
The quick terminal
Section titled “The quick terminal”When an agent stops to ask you something, its card on the board says so. Click that part of the card (Open quick terminal to respond) and the agent’s terminal opens in a drawer over the board. Answer it there, then use the arrows to move to the next card that’s waiting, or Expand to full view to open the whole ticket. The drawer closes by itself when nothing is waiting.
Terminal settings
Section titled “Terminal settings”Under Settings, then You, then Appearance, the Terminal card has:
- Copy on select: selecting text copies it, and programs in the terminal may write to your clipboard.
- Predictive local echo: shows what you type, underlined, before a terminal on another machine echoes it back. It makes a slow connection feel faster. You only see this one where By Dawn can reach other machines.
Why is there no Terminals item in my sidebar?
By Dawn can’t reach a machine to run a terminal on from where you are. The desktop app always can, so use that.
I closed a tab on another machine. Is the job still running?
Yes. Closing it only hid it. Find it under the background button and choose it to reopen, or choose Kill from the tab’s menu to end it.
Can I type into an agent's terminal while it's working?
Yes. Whatever you type goes to the agent’s session, as if you were at its keyboard. To steer the agent, it’s usually clearer to write in Feed.
Where to go next
Section titled “Where to go next”- The agent browser: watch and take over the browser an agent uses.
- Remote agents and machines: pair the machines terminals and tickets run on.