Runs mode
Every conversation becomes a floating card over your project, all live at once — and the HUD, which puts one conversation on the glass.
Chat mode gives you one conversation in a side panel. That's the right shape when you're working with one agent on one thing.
Runs mode is for when you aren't. The panel slides away, and every conversation you have open becomes its own floating card over the 3D view of your project — all of them live, all of them visible, with one command bar at the bottom that aims at whichever card you've selected.
A "run" here is not a new object. It's a conversation you already have open, seen as a card instead of as a panel. Same history, same id, same colour. Nothing is copied and nothing is started — you're changing how you're looking, not what you're looking at.
Getting in and out#
The switcher is the right-most icon in the strip above the message box, and it shows the icon of the mode you're currently in. Click it and three choices open upward:
- Chat mode (side panel)
- Runs mode (floating cards)
- HUD mode (conversation on glass)
That icon is the only way in. There's no menu entry for it and no keyboard shortcut — worth knowing before you go hunting for one.
The moment you switch to runs, the agent panel animates off the edge and every open conversation is floated as a card. Leaving runs mode dismisses every card. The layout isn't lost — each card's position and size are remembered, and coming back puts them where you left them — but there is no way to bring a single card back while you're in chat mode. Cards exist in runs mode or not at all.
A card, part by part#
The dot at the far left of the header is the conversation's identity colour, picked once and never changed. When that agent is working, the dot glows and pulses. Across a screen of cards, the dot is what tells them apart.
The title is the conversation's name, uppercased and cut to 10 characters — no ellipsis, it just stops. Two similarly named runs will have identical headers, which is the other reason the dot matters.
The frame lights up in the identity colour only on the selected card. The rest sit in neutral white.
The body is the whole conversation — the same transcript the side panel shows, with its rail, its checkpoint chips, its permission card and its indicator — minus the composer, which the command bar owns. A thin card drops the rail and tightens the steps.
The header buttons: minimize, expand, close. Double-click the header to swap between its last two sizes.
The command bar#
One bar, bottom-centre, reading Ask your coworker…. The cards have no input of their own —
everything you type goes to the selected run, so check which one is lit before you send. Sending
floats that run's card if it wasn't showing, so the answer has somewhere to land.
To its left sits a row of lights, one per conversation: the active one as a titled pill, the others as titled pills too when there's room, dim dots when there isn't. A dot that's fully lit and pulsing is a background run that's still working.
- Click a light to select it.
- Double-click a light to select it and bring its card back if you'd closed it.
- Middle-click a light to close that conversation entirely.
- Right-click the row for New Tab.
Double-Space collapses the bar to a small pill reading Ask your coworker… and expands it
again. It affects the bar only — the cards stay exactly where they are. The bar also fades out on
its own while you sit still watching a run, and back in the moment you move.
The 3D view's camera buttons ride the bar's right edge in this mode, instead of the corner of the scene.
Arranging#
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Drag the header | Moves the card |
| Drag any edge or corner | Resizes |
| Double-click the header | Swaps between the last two sizes |
| Minimize | Parks the card as a bar in the bottom-left corner |
| Click a parked bar | Restores it |
| Expand | Full height, up to 1400px wide, centred |
Ctrl/Cmd + ← → ↑ ↓ |
Snaps the active card to that half of the screen |
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + ↓ |
Minimizes every card |
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + ↑ |
Brings them all back |
New cards fill from the top-right corner downward, then open a new column to the left.
Note
The arrow-key snaps are ignored while the cursor is in a text box — and in runs mode the command bar usually has focus. Click a card first, or click away from the bar, or nothing will happen.
Two behaviours that surprise people. Resizing a card by hand sets the size every future card will open at — dragging one around doesn't, but resizing one does. And only one card can be expanded at a time; expanding a second restores the first.
The command bar always sits above the cards; no card can cover it.
Closing a card is not stopping a run#
The ✕ on a card closes the window. It does not close the conversation and it does not stop the agent — the run keeps going, and the only sign of it is its light still pulsing in the bar. Double-click that light to bring the card back.
To actually close the conversation, middle-click its light in the command bar, or use the ✕ on the selected pill.
The graph underneath#
The 3D view keeps running the whole time — nothing is torn down. It gets wider, since the agent panel is gone.
The connection runs the other way too. Click a file node in the graph and its card shows a history of the last few writes, edits and reads that touched it this session — up to eight rows; clicking one floats the card of the conversation that did it and scrolls to that exact tool call.
HUD mode#
The third choice puts one conversation directly on the glass over the 3D view — no panel, no cards. The active conversation's messages fill the pane, and when they overflow the oldest turn burns off the top, so what you see is always the most recent stretch. The same command bar drives it, and the same lights switch between conversations. It's the mode for watching the graph and the agent at once, on a screen where a panel would be in the way.
What survives a restart#
Remembered: which mode you were in, which conversations were floating, every card's position and size, each conversation's colour, and the card size you last set by hand. Reopen Semantix and the arrangement comes back.
Not remembered: which cards were minimized or expanded, and whether the command bar was collapsed. Those reset each session.