The sidebar
The sidebar is Termio’s control surface — one workspace at a time, with Terminals, Chats, and Projects grouped in one list and every session reporting a live status.
Everything you run in Termio lives in the sidebar on the left. It’s one scrollable list, grouped into sections, where every row is a live session reporting what it’s doing right now. Click a row to bring it forward; the rest keep running in the background.
One workspace at a time
The sidebar is scoped to a workspace: the switcher in its toolbar names the one
you’re in, and the list below holds only what’s filed under it. Switch with ⌘1
through ⌘9, from the switcher, or from File ▸ Workspace. Each workspace comes
back to the session you left it on, with its panes and its inspector tab.
A workspace belongs to one machine, so switching workspaces is also how you move between machines — the switcher names the machine beside any workspace whose own name doesn’t already say it. See Workspaces and Devices.
Sections
The sidebar groups your sessions by what they are:
- Terminals — standalone shells and agents you start with
⌘T, not tied to a project. Your scratchpad. - Chats — throwaway agent sessions for quick questions (see below).
- Projects — the folders you’ve opened. Each project expands to the sessions running inside it, and any git worktrees nest one level deeper. The tree is three levels: project → worktree → session. See Git worktrees.
Empty sections stay hidden, so the list only shows what you’re actually using.
Sessions the machine is hosting that Termio didn’t start — one you began over
plain ssh, or launched with termiod on the box — appear in the list
automatically as ordinary sessions, filed into the project whose folder they run
in, or under Terminals otherwise. There is no separate section to learn: a
session is a session, wherever it came from. If a machine can’t be reached, the
device switcher says so in ssh’s own words rather than going quiet.
Status
Every session row carries a status dot that updates live. There are four states:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| working | The agent is actively producing output. |
| idle | Nothing pending, or you’re already looking at it. |
| done | Finished a task while you were on another session — a calm “ready” cue, so you notice a completed run without it shouting for attention. |
| needs you | Blocked on a question or a permission prompt. Go back. |
The distinction between needs you and done is the point: needs you means an agent is stuck and can’t proceed without you; done means it finished on its own and is just letting you know. Concepts covers the model and where each signal comes from.
Start a long run, switch away, and let the status dots do the watching. When a row flips to needs you you know to jump back; when it flips to done the work landed while you were elsewhere.
Chats
The Chats section holds scratch agent sessions — for when you want to ask an
agent something without opening a project. Press ⌘N for a New Chat and it
starts in a shared scratch directory (~/.termio/chats), never in whatever folder
you happen to be in. Close them individually, or clear the lot from the section’s
menu. Treat them as disposable: quick questions, throwaway experiments, nothing
you need to keep.
Switching without losing your place
Because each session is a real process running on its machine, an agent doesn’t
pause when it’s off-screen — or when you switch workspaces, or close the window.
Click between rows freely, or — once you have more than a handful — jump straight
to any session by name with ⇧⌘O. See Navigation.
Rows move by drag. Dropping one in the middle of another groups the two sessions into one split; dropping on a row’s top or bottom edge reorders it into that gap. A line means between these, a lifted row means into this one. Dragging a row onto a pane groups it in there instead.
Concepts
The nouns Termio is built from — device, workspace, project, session, pane, and worktree — plus the status model that tells you which agent needs you.
Command palette & Open Quickly
Two keyboard panels drive Termio without the mouse — the Command Palette runs any action, and Open Quickly jumps to any session, project, or file.