Interactive TUI

Run koda with no arguments to open the full-screen TUI.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  [conversation history — scrollable with PgUp/PgDn]                     │
│                                                                          │
│  ⚡ Bash   cargo test                                                    │
│  │ running 42 tests …                                                   │
│  ✓ Bash (exit 0)                                                         │
│                                                                          │
│  All tests pass! Here's what I changed in `auth.rs` …                   │
│────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 🐻 ────────────────│
│  > _                                                                     │
│  📋 1  also update the README                                            │
│  📋 2  then run the linter                                               │
│  ↑ pop  ·  Ctrl+U clear                                                 │
│  claude-sonnet-4 │ auto │ ████████░░ 78% │ ⏳ 8s │ 📋 2 queued ^U clear │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Layout

• History panel — scrollable conversation history. Supports syntax-highlighted code blocks, rendered markdown, and collapsible tool-call summaries.
• Input — multi-line editor with tab-completion for slash commands and @file paths, and reverse-search (Ctrl+R).
• Queue preview — shown above the status bar only when the deferred queue has items. Displays up to 3 rows of pending text with index numbers, an overflow count, and keybinding hints. Hidden when the queue is empty.
• Status bar — live view of model, trust mode, current working directory (right-truncated to fit, with ~ substitution for $HOME), context usage bar, MCP server count (when configured), inference time, queue count, and last-turn token/speed stats.

Starting a conversation

Type your message and press Enter. Koda streams the response in real time.

Typing during inference

You can type while Koda is thinking or running tools. The input area stays active throughout. Two lanes are available:

Next lane — steer the current turn (default)

Press Enter during inference. Your text is sent directly to the engine and injected into the current turn before the next provider request. The model sees it immediately — useful for course-correcting mid-task.

  📥 Next: add the missing error handling too

Slash commands (/cancel, /clear, /model, …) are not accepted mid-inference (#1211/#1222). Type /cancel agent:1 while the model is thinking and you’ll see a transient “slash commands disabled during inference — press Esc first” hint instead of the text being silently steered to the model. Press Esc to interrupt, then run the slash.

Later lane — queue for the next turn

Press Ctrl+J during inference. Your text is deferred to the later queue and will run as a single new turn after the current one completes. All deferred items are joined and submitted together, so the model sees them as one message.

  📋 Later (1): also bump the version number

Slash commands are blocked from this lane too (#1211/#1222) for the same reason — a deferred /clear would silently wipe history when the next turn starts. Press Esc, then run the slash.

Queue preview widget

While items are in the later queue, a preview panel appears above the status bar:

  📋 1  also bump the version number
  📋 2  and update the changelog
  ↑ pop  ·  Ctrl+U clear

• ↑ (Up Arrow) — pops the last item back into the editor so you can edit it before re-submitting.
• Ctrl+U — clears all deferred items without cancelling inference.
• Esc / Ctrl+C — cancels inference and also clears the queue so deferred messages don’t fire unexpectedly after a cancelled turn.

Choosing a lane

Approval prompt

When trust mode is safe or plan, Koda asks before executing tools. The menu area shows the tool name, the action detail, and hotkeys:

  Bash  rm -rf dist/
  [y] approve   [n] reject   [f] feedback   [a] always

See Approval & trust modes for the full reference.

See also Slash commands and Keybindings.