Command palette & navigation

The command palette finds any chat on any gateway and runs common commands, without leaving the keyboard. Back and Forward retrace the chats you’ve visited, like a browser.

If you choose another chat or gateway while New Chat is creating a session, the new chat remains available without replacing your newer selection.

On iPhone and iPad, tapping the status bar above the chat does not jump the conversation to the top. Scroll through the transcript or open a message from search, a bookmark or a link to move to it.

macOS

Search the synthetic demo chats from the keyboard. Open image for full size.

On iOS, the command palette requires a hardware keyboard.

Open the palette

Press ⌘ K, or choose Go → Command Palette…. Press it again to close it.

• macOS: the Go menu is in the menu bar. The palette opens in the window you’re using.
• iOS: there’s no on-screen button. The palette opens with ⌘ K on a hardware keyboard, such as on an iPad.

Type to search. The field says “Jump to a chat or run a command…”.

What you can do

Before you type, results are grouped into sections:

Section	What’s there
Chats	Chats on every gateway. Recently visited chats come first, then the selected gateway’s chats in sidebar order, then other gateways’. Each shows its agent and origin, plus the gateway name if you have more than one. Pinned chats show their ⌘ number.
New Chat	“New Chat with Agent” for each agent on the selected gateway, while it’s connected. The default agent is marked Default agent.
Commands	The commands below, plus “Switch to Gateway” for each other saved gateway.

Helper (subagent) runs and archived chats aren’t listed.

Commands

Command	What it does
Change Model…	Opens a list of the agent’s models. It shows the current model, and it’s disabled if the chat’s model can’t be changed.
Pin Chat / Unpin Chat	Pins or unpins the current chat.
Show Thinking Steps / Hide Thinking Steps	Switches Thinking Steps between None and the default, Live Only.
Dictate Message / Stop Dictation	Starts or stops dictation in the current chat’s text box. Shown only when a chat is open and dictation is available.
Go Back / Go Forward	Same as ⌘ [ and ⌘ ].
Show Sidebar / Hide Sidebar	Same as ⌃ ⌘ S. Shown as Toggle Sidebar on macOS. Not shown on iPhone, where the chat list is one step back.
Next Unread Chat	Jumps to the next chat with unread messages. Enabled only when something is unread.
Open Settings…	Opens Settings: a window with tabs on macOS, a list of pages on iOS.
Gateway Settings…	Opens Gateway Settings for the selected gateway.
Automations…	Opens the selected gateway’s automations.
Approval History…	Opens Approval History for the selected gateway.
Usage & Cost…	Opens the Usage dashboard for the selected gateway.
Session Usage…	Opens the current chat’s usage drill-down. Shown only when a chat is open.

Searching messages

Once you’ve typed at least 2 characters, the palette also offers Search Messages for “query”, after the matching chats, and after any command whose title starts with what you type. It’s first when no chat or command title starts with your query. Choose it, or press ⇧ ⌘ F (Go → Search Messages…), to search the text of every cached chat on the selected gateway. See Search messages.

Choosing a model

Change Model… opens a second page with “Choose a model…” in the field:

• Default (model) goes back to the agent’s default;
• each model the agent can use follows, with its provider. The current one is marked Current;
• models that aren’t available, or can’t be picked by hand, are greyed out.

Matching

Search is forgiving:

• Every word you type has to match, but it can match the title, the subtitle or hidden keywords.
• Letters can match in order, not only as a whole word. jptr finds “Japan trip”, and nwcr finds “New Chat with Research”.
• Case and accents don’t matter.
• Keywords include agent, gateway, channel and category names. Commands also match common synonyms: “audit” or “log” finds Approval History…, “cron” finds Automations…, “spend” or “tokens” finds Usage & Cost…, and “preferences” finds Open Settings….

If nothing matches, the palette shows “No matches”.

Keys

Action	Keys
Move through results	↑ ↓
Run the selected result	Return
Back to commands from the models or messages page	Esc, or Delete in an empty field
Close the palette	Esc

The selection wraps from the last result to the first. Clicking outside the palette also closes it.

Back and Forward

Go → Back (⌘ [) and Go → Forward (⌘ ]) work like a browser’s history, across all your gateways:

• Opening a new chat clears Forward.
• Chats that no longer exist are skipped.
• Removing a gateway drops its chats from the history.
• Back goes up to 50 chats.
• The history isn’t saved, so it starts fresh each time you open Pincer.

Back and Forward are greyed out when there’s nowhere to go. On iOS there are no toolbar buttons for them. Use the keys on a hardware keyboard, or Go Back and Go Forward in the palette.

Pinned chats ⌘1–9

⌘ 1 to ⌘ 9 open the selected gateway’s first nine pinned chats, in the order the sidebar shows them. Archived chats are skipped.

On macOS they’re also listed under Go → Pinned Chats, which appears when the selected gateway has pinned chats. To pin a chat, see Per-chat actions.

See Keyboard shortcuts for the full list.

Links to chats

Every chat has a pincer:// link. Choose Copy Link to Chat from a chat’s ⋯ menu, then open the link from anywhere to jump back to that chat. Handoff moves the chat you’re reading between your Mac and iPhone. Links, notifications, the menu bar, message search, the Open Chat Shortcuts action and Handoff all open chats the same way, and chats you open from them are added to Back and Forward. See Deep links & Handoff.

Deleting an automation keeps it removed even if an earlier refresh finishes afterward. A subsequent refresh loads the current jobs from the Gateway.

Palette matches are prepared in the background as you type. While a newer query is being prepared, the last finished rows can remain visible, but Return and row actions wait for the current query and inventory. Closing the palette prevents pending matches from replacing its results.