The Workbench

Overview

The web app’s shell is a fixed-region workbench in the VS Code mold: predictable named regions, everything opens as a tab, one command palette, one drag model. The chrome is monochrome by design — hue is reserved for your data (status dots, charts), so the interface recedes and the work reads first.

Regions

Region	What lives there
Rail (left)	Search, Explorer, Tasks, Data, Chats, plugin items; identity and settings below
Left Panel	One view at a time: Explorer, Tasks, Data, Chats, or a plugin view
Editor Area	Tabbed documents — pages, databases, canvases, dashboards, channels, saved views
Right Panel	Contextual sections published by the active tab (properties, comments, backlinks…)
Bottom Panel	Tray: Shelf, quick capture, Notifications, sync activity, and a query console
Status Bar	Left = workspace scope (sync, presence), right = view scope (save state, theme)

Layout, open tabs, pins, recents, and zen-mode snapshots persist locally and survive reloads bit-for-bit.

Tabs

Everything opens as a tab, and the router stays authoritative: navigating opens-or-activates the matching tab, so deep links, back/forward, and old bookmarks keep working.

Preview tabs — a single click from the Explorer or palette opens an italic preview tab that is replaced by the next preview. Editing the content or double-clicking promotes it to a real tab.
Pinning — pinned tabs stay put and survive “close others”.
Splits — one optional second editor group: drag a tab to the editor edge or press ⌘⇧\.
Performance — background tabs are unmounted entirely; they hold no live document subscriptions.

Command palette

⌘K (or ⌘P) opens quick-open: recents first, then full-text page matches and every node type. Type > to switch to command mode — every command in the registry is listed with its keyboard chord. Escape restores focus to where you were.

Keyboard map

Chord	Action
`⌘K` / `⌘P`	Palette / quick-open (`>` = command mode)
`⌘B`, `⌘\`, `⌘J`	Toggle left / right / bottom panel
`⌘.`	Zen mode (Esc Esc exits; layout restored bit-for-bit)
`⌘T` / `⌘W`	New page / close tab
`⌃Tab` / `⌃⇧Tab`	Cycle tabs
`⌘1` / `⌘2`	Focus editor group
`⌘⇧\`	Split editor
`F6` / `⇧F6`	Cycle focus through shell regions

Drag model

Every draggable entity — explorer rows, tabs, task rows, database row chips, canvas selections — carries the same node payload. Drops create references, never copies:

onto the editor → a wikilink chip at the drop point
onto a relation cell → a link
onto a canvas → a source-backed card
onto the tab bar → a tab
onto an editor edge → a split
onto the Shelf (bottom tray) → a held reference for later

Theme

The token system is a single APCA-contrast-tuned monochrome ramp per mode (surface-0/1/2, ink-1/2/3, hairline, accent-ink). Chrome sits on dimmer surfaces than the work; the editor area is the only brightest-surface region. A true-black variant collapses dark surfaces to #000 for OLED displays — toggle it from the status bar theme control.

Extending the shell

Plugins contribute items into fixed containers; they cannot invent new chrome:

Rail items / left-panel views — SidebarContribution (a panel component becomes a left-panel view)
Status bar items — StatusBarContribution (workspace scope or view scope)
Palette commands — CommandContribution, chords included
Context sections — views publish sections to the Right Panel
Dashboard widgets — WidgetContribution (see the Dashboards guide)

See the Plugins guide for the contribution API.