02. Everyday Conversation and the Screen

Where commands come from

/, the palette, the cheatsheet, /docs, and /tutorial are different lists. You do not need to memorize any of them.

The live menu wins. Skills, plugins, screen mode, and session state change what / and Ctrl+P show. If a command is missing from the live list, the live list is right.

Entry	What it lists	How you open it
Slash menu	Commands you can run from the prompt	Type `/` on an empty prompt
Command palette	Commands and keyboard shortcuts and skills	`Ctrl+P`, `?`, or `/help`
Shortcuts cheatsheet	Key bindings only	`Ctrl+.` (or `Ctrl+X`)
How-to Guides	The in-app user-guide pages	`/docs` (aliases `/howto`, `/guides`)
Tutorial overlay	Nine short first-hour pages	`/tutorial` (aliases `/tour`, `/onboarding`)

/home (alias /welcome) is not a catalog. It leaves the session and returns to the welcome screen. There is no key binding for that.

The slash menu is the everyday list. The palette is what you reach for when you remember an action but not whether it is a key or a command. The cheatsheet is the keyboard. /docs is the in-app reference. /tutorial is the first hour.

The slash menu (`/`)

Type / on an empty prompt. A searchable dropdown appears and fuzzy-matches as you type. Tab or Enter accepts the highlighted row.

Commands come from three places, in one menu:

Pager builtins — the TUI (/find, /vim-mode, /docs, …).
Shell builtins — the Matcha CLI backend (/new, /model, /compact, …).
Skills with user-invocable: true in SKILL.md.

A built-in always wins the bare name. If a skill is also called login, /login stays the built-in and the skill is /plugin-name:login. The menu badges both (built-in vs skill · local / skill · acme).

The same menu is filtered by screen mode. Fullscreen-only and minimal-only commands are hidden in the mode that cannot run them.

The command palette (`Ctrl+P`)

Ctrl+P or ? (Shift+/) opens one searchable list:

every keyboard shortcut with its current binding
every slash command
available skills

Type to filter, Enter to run.

/help opens this same palette. It is not a separate manual. In minimal mode there is no always-visible shortcuts bar, so /help is the advertised entry (also shown in the status line).

/help

The shortcuts cheatsheet (`Ctrl+.`)

Ctrl+. needs the Kitty keyboard protocol (or tmux extended-keys on). On VS Code / Cursor / Windsurf / Zed, VTE, Apple Terminal, Windows Terminal, JetBrains, tmux with extended-keys off, and similar setups, Matcha CLI advertises Ctrl+X as the primary cheatsheet key. Ctrl+X always works as a classic control character. Run /doctor if modified keys misbehave in tmux.

This is not /help and not /docs.

`/docs`

/docs
/docs Getting Started

Bare /docs (or /docs how-to, howto, guides, list, tui) opens the How-to Guides picker inside Matcha CLI. /docs <title> opens a guide by case-insensitive title.

`/tutorial`

/tutorial

Fullscreen only.

Nine short topics (first prompt, attaching context, navigation, slash commands, worktrees, plan mode, customization, switching from another tool). → goes to the next topic. Nothing auto-shows; this command or the palette is the only way in.

`/home`

/home

Alias: /welcome. Exit the current session and return to the welcome screen. It does not quit Matcha CLI (/quit / Ctrl+Q does that).

`/release-notes`

/release-notes

Alias: /changelog. This command is unavailable. It does not fetch remote release notes or open a browser. Use /docs.