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skydive chat opens a full-screen terminal chat with your agents. It streams replies live, renders Markdown, shows readable diffs for file edits, and keeps your conversation history one keystroke away.

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Moving around

The TUI has three screens: a welcome screen (pick or create an agent), a conversation home, then chat. esc goes back one level. Press ? in chat (with an empty composer) for the full searchable keybind reference. The essentials: The bottom-right corner of the screen shows the active model. When a conversation is pinned to a model that differs from the agent’s default, the footer names both: the pinned model for this thread and the agent’s usual default. Switching via ctrl+p lets you scope the change to just this conversation or move the agent’s default for all future conversations.

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Send while it works

You don’t have to wait for a run to finish. Send another message mid-run to steer the agent: it folds your input into the work in progress. esc cancels the latest steer.

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Images

Attach images three ways:
  • Paste from the clipboard with ctrl+v
  • Drag and drop image files onto the terminal
  • ctrl+x drops the last staged image before sending

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Slash commands

Type / in the composer to open the command menu. Type to filter, ↵ to run.

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The side panel

Press ctrl+s to open a right-hand panel beside the chat. It shows at a glance what your agent is doing and the resources it is using, without leaving the conversation. The panel is hidden by default and only appears when your terminal is wide enough to fit it alongside a readable chat column (72 columns minimum). Toggling on a narrower terminal shows a brief warning instead of squeezing the layout. What the panel shows:
  • Conversation and agent at the top: the conversation title and the active agent name.
  • Computer stats: live CPU, memory, and disk usage for the agent’s sandbox, updated every 30 seconds. Shows an idle line when no sandbox is running and a stale-data note if the last sample is more than five minutes old.

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The file review pane

Open it with ctrl+g. The file pane sits alongside the chat, below it, or fullscreen. The layout adapts to terminal size and is mouse-resizable. Two tabs: Changes shows every edit the agent made in this conversation as reviewable diff hunks. Toggle between the full session and the last turn with t. Leave comments on any line or selection and send them back to the agent with s. Files browses the agent’s ~/Documents/ folder. Navigate the tree and preview text files.

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Run local shell commands

Start a message with ! to run it in your local shell instead of sending it to the agent:
Commands run with your own shell environment (aliases, functions, PATH), and the working directory carries over between ! commands. Output renders in the transcript, so you can reference it in your next message to the agent.

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Give the agent local access

The agent runs in its own cloud sandbox. To let it run commands on your machine for a task, press ctrl+t in chat and approve the prompt (y to allow, n to keep the machine private). Access is default-deny, per agent, and revocable the same way. You can also start chat with the grant in place:
See Reaching your computer for how local access works.

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Connect cards

When an agent needs a credential or a service authorization, a connect card appears in the transcript. Press ctrl+r to run the newest card: sign in via the browser, or enter the credential in the prompt that opens.

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Themes and notifications

  • The TUI follows your terminal’s light or dark background. Pin a colorscheme with ctrl+o, --theme <id>, or the SKYDIVE_THEME environment variable.
  • When a run finishes or needs input while the terminal is unfocused, the CLI shows a desktop notification. Disable with --no-notify.

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The welcome screen and conversation home

Welcome screen is the first thing you see when you run skydive chat with no agent specified. Pick an existing agent from the list, or press ctrl+n to create one. Conversation home opens once you pick an agent (or when you use --agent). It mirrors the web app home: a composer at the top and your conversation list below.
  • Type a message and press ↵ to start a fresh conversation seeded with it.
  • Press ↵ on an empty composer to open the highlighted conversation.
  • Type /query in the composer to search conversations by title, message body, or participant name. The results filter as you type.
Unread conversations are flagged. Opening one marks it read here and in the web app. To read a conversation without the TUI, use skydive conversations show.
The TUI runs on the Bun runtime. The CLI provisions a private, pinned Bun automatically on first run; nothing to install. If your machine can’t fetch it (offline or unsupported platform), install Bun yourself or use chat -p, which runs under Node.