07. Parallel Work

Assistant dashboard

The assistant dashboard is a fullscreen roster of top-level sessions in this Matcha CLI process — local sessions and forks. From one screen you peek, reply, dispatch a new assistant, pin, rename, stop, or attach.

It is not the agents modal (/config-agents / /personas), not the disk session picker (/resume / Ctrl+S), and not a remote workspace hub. Sub-assistants are not listed as their own rows; they run under a parent that already shows when work is in flight.

When you need it

Once you have more than one live session — forks, extra Ctrl+N sessions, dashboard dispatches — you need a place that answers:

Who is waiting on me?
Who is still running (including background commands, monitors, and /loop)?
How do I talk to one of them without losing the others?

The dashboard is that place. /resume is for past conversations on disk. /config-agents is for definitions and personas, not live sessions.

Open it

Entry	Where
`/dashboard`	Inside a session. Aliases: `/agents-dashboard`, `/sessions`.
`Ctrl+\`	Same view; from the dashboard it toggles back.
`matcha dashboard`	Launch the TUI already on the dashboard.

You need a completed sign-in and an answered folder-trust question. Opening again while the dashboard is already active closes it.

If the feature is off, /dashboard toasts "Agent dashboard is disabled in this configuration" and matcha dashboard exits with an error before the TUI starts.

Disable or hide

# ~/.matcha/config.toml
[dashboard]
enabled = false

export MATCHA_AGENT_DASHBOARD=0

GROK_AGENT_DASHBOARD=0 is the registered compatibility alias. The live command list also hides /dashboard when the flag is off.

Persisted layout lives under the same [dashboard] table: grouping (state or directory), pinned, and reorder (session ids, so they survive restarts).

What you see

Rows are top-level assistants, grouped by state (Needs input → Working → Idle → Inactive → Completed → Failed) or by working directory (Ctrl+G toggles). A row stays **Working** while background work, a monitor, or a scheduled /loop is still alive, even if the turn looks idle.

**Inactive** rows are roster-only sessions owned by other Matcha CLI processes. That section starts collapsed. Idle rows fold after the freshest handful so the list stays scannable.

The bottom box always starts a new session when you type a prompt. A selected row is a navigation cursor, not a reply target — open peek or press Enter to talk to an existing assistant. Ctrl+/ is search/filter, not dispatch.

Peek (select a row) shows the latest activity and a ❯ reply field that sends to that assistant (queues if it is busy). Ctrl+S after a typed reply or dispatch also attaches to the full conversation.

Key	Action
`Enter` (empty)	Open the selected assistant
`Ctrl+S`	Send and attach (or dispatch and attach)
`Ctrl+R`	Rename
`Ctrl+T`	Pin / unpin
`Ctrl+X`	Cancel a running turn; twice within 2s permanently deletes
`Esc`	Step back; never clears a typed dispatch draft (`Ctrl+U` / `Ctrl+C`)
`Ctrl+\`	Leave the dashboard (or return from details)

There is no “mark completed” command. Completed / Failed is derived when the turn ends and nothing is still running in the background. /exit inside an attached assistant closes that session without deleting history; /delete wipes it and returns to the dashboard.

Not in this build

matcha workspace is hidden. It would expose this directory to a Computer Hub (workspace_hub_exposure). That capability is disabled. The substitute is this local dashboard plus git worktrees — all on this machine.

Cloud Agent (cloud_agent) does not appear as a dashboard destination.