Workspace and panels
To the right of the conversation is a workspace you arrange yourself: background tasks, files, evolution, workspace changes, terminal, browser and preview all open as panels.
The conversation stays on the left; the right side is a workspace you arrange. Panels sit in tab groups that can split, move to any side, resize, maximize or collapse.
Arranging panels
- Drag and drop: drop a tab on the top, bottom, left, right or center of another group.
- Hover menus: hover the maximize button to move the group left, right, top or bottom, maximize it, or fill and rearrange; hover + to open any panel kind.
- Presets: sidebar, bottom, right stacked, three columns, fill.
- Undo and redo, and reopen a tab you just closed.
- Saved layouts: store the current arrangement and switch back in one click.
Moving, splitting or collapsing panels, or switching conversations, never reloads a terminal or browser.
Panel kinds
| Panel | Use |
|---|---|
| Background tasks | Progress of background work, scheduled tasks and subagents (below) |
| Files | The project tree with change marks and a changed-only filter; reveal in Finder |
| Evolution | The gene tree with one sentence per node |
| Workspace changes | Compare, stage and discard changes (below) |
| Terminal | Run commands in the project folder; needs “Read, write and run commands” |
| Browser | The agent’s browser, live |
| Preview | Static pages or a dev server from the project |
| Side chat | Ask about one part of the main conversation separately |
| Review | This turn’s diffs, Markdown and code |
Background tasks panel
Grouped as needs you, running, queued and upcoming, and finished. Each card shows its kind, elapsed time, subagents, token use, plan items done, steps done and failed, and the step in progress. Changes, files and previews open as tabs beside it.
When background work starts, the panel opens by itself for the current project, unless you closed it during that run (a setting turns this off). Sidebar rows, the strip above the composer, the timeline’s progress link and the top bar badge all open the panel on that run, and every count agrees.
Stuck entries can be settled in place: plan items can be marked done or dropped (undoable), failed records can be answered from the row, and Clear… clears a project’s unfinished items in one confirmed pass.
Workspace changes panel
Compares “base → target” like the Claude Code desktop compare view:
- since the merge base with a branch: committed, staged, unstaged and untracked changes;
- uncommitted changes only;
- this conversation’s changes;
- or any local branch from a searchable list.
A compacted file tree sits beside every file’s diff stacked with line numbers, syntax colour, wrapping and expandable context, loaded in batches. ⌘F finds, ⇧⌘Y toggles the tree. Other worktrees of the same repository can be viewed read-only.
In a Git repository you also see the branch, upstream and conflicted files, and can stage / unstage and discard. Discarding takes two steps and is never available to agents. Nested repositories are never staged or discarded.
When the project is not a Git repository, the panel lists the changes Rna recorded itself, each revertible. See Isolation and rollback.
Desktop workbench
What the sidebar, conversation, tasks and evolution are each for; the workspace on the right has its own guide.
Subagents
The main conversation can hand a self-contained piece of work to a subagent. Three read-only helpers investigate, plan and review; a worker makes changes in its own worktree.