Runs mode
Every conversation becomes a floating card over your project, all live at once.
Chat mode gives you one conversation in a panel on the right. 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 row 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
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, three things happen: the chat column animates off the right edge, every open conversation is floated as a card, and the floating settings window closes if it was open.
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 last 5 turns, and only those. Above them, if there are more, a faint line
reads … 12 earlier turns in the chat panel. A card is a window onto what's happening now — the
full history stays in chat mode. A conversation with nothing in it yet says No activity yet.
The strip along the bottom edge appears only while that run is working: a spinning mark, a word for what it's doing — Pondering, Perusing, Scribbling, Rummaging — and often a filename. On a Claude Code run it also carries a live token count. It's the same indicator the chat panel uses, pinned to the card.
Four buttons in the header, left to right: swap between the last two sizes, minimize, expand, close.
On a wide enough card, a minimap appears along the right edge — one tick per turn, click to jump. Below about 360px wide, the card goes bare: the minimap and the timeline gutter both drop away.
The command bar#
One bar, bottom-center, 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.
To its left sits a row of lights, one per conversation: the active one as a titled pill, the others as dim dots. A dot that's fully lit and pulsing is a background run that's still working.
- Click a dot to select it. The card glides to the center of the screen, and whatever was in the center swaps into the slot it left.
- Double-click a dot to select it and bring its card back if you'd closed it.
- Middle-click a dot to close that conversation entirely.
Double-Space collapses the bar to a small pill and expands it again. It affects the bar only — the cards stay exactly where they are.
Arranging#
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Drag the header | Moves the card |
| Drag any edge or corner | Resizes — no wider than the work area, no smaller than 320×200 |
| 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, centered |
Ctrl/Cmd + ← → |
Steps the last-raised card through left, center, right |
Ctrl/Cmd + ↑ ↓ |
Docks it to the top or bottom edge |
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 moves 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. They're also declined for a card that's minimized or expanded.
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.
Note
Restoring an expanded card returns it to its old position but at the minimum size, not the size it was before you expanded it. You'll need to resize it again.
Cards can't leave the work area — no gesture will put one over the menu bar or the status bar — and the command bar always sits above them.
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 dot still pulsing in the bar. Double- click that dot to bring the card back.
To actually close the conversation, middle-click its light in the command bar. The selected run shows as a wider pill with its own ✕; the unselected ones are bare dots, and middle-click is their only close gesture.
The graph underneath#
The 3D view keeps running the whole time — nothing is torn down. It gets wider, since the chat column is gone, and the orientation gizmo moves out of the scene corner to sit beside the command bar.
The connection runs the other way too. Hovering a file node in the graph gives you a history list of the last few writes and edits 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.
Note
That jump only reaches what a card is showing. If the tool call is older than the last 5 turns, the card has nothing to scroll to and the click quietly does nothing. Switch to chat mode to find it.
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.
Note
If a card was minimized when you left runs mode, it comes back still minimized when you
re-enter — parked in the bottom-left as a bar rather than sitting where you expect it. If cards
seem to be missing, look in that corner, or press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+↑.