Desktop App
Getting around
The three navigation levels, titlebar breadcrumbs, the sidebar, and the session tabs.
Operon is one window, but it moves between three levels depending on how deep you are into your work: the list of all your projects, a single project, and the views inside one session. The chrome around the edges — a titlebar with breadcrumbs, a sidebar on the left, and a row of tabs above each session — stays consistent so you always know where you are and how to get back. This page is the map.
The three levels
Everything in Operon lives at one of three navigation levels. You move down by clicking into a project and then a session, and back up through the breadcrumbs or the sidebar. The level you are at decides what the sidebar and main area show.
Level 1
Project list
The front door. Home and the global views — your fleet of active sessions, all projects, the global task board, analytics, and more. Nothing is scoped to a single project yet.
Level 2
Project dashboard
One project in focus. The sidebar switches to that project’s session list — past and present — and you can create a new session or reopen a historical one.
Level 3
Session views
Inside a single session. The TabBar appears above the content and you move between the session’s views — Terminal, Activity, Timeline, and the rest.
The titlebar and breadcrumbs
The thin bar across the very top of the window is the titlebar. On the left it carries breadcrumbs — a trail like Projects, then the project name, then the session — that mirrors exactly how deep you are. Every crumb except the current one is clickable, so the breadcrumbs are the fastest way to jump back up a level without losing your place.
Note
A small usage chip sometimes appears in the titlebar next to the breadcrumbs. It is conditional: it shows up only after your AI provider has printed one of its own rate-limit warning banners. There is no live quota API behind it — the chip is a best-effort read of what the provider told you, not a real-time usage meter. If you never hit a rate limit, you will never see it.
The sidebar
The sidebar runs down the left edge and changes with your level. Out at the project list it shows the global navigation — Home, Projects, Tasks, and the other app-wide views. Inside a project it becomes the session list for that project: every session with a status dot showing whether its agent is working, waiting on you, or done, plus a search box and controls to create a new session or end a running one.
- Status dots — a live indicator per session so you can tell at a glance which agents are active, which need attention, and which have finished.
- Search — filter the session list by name when a project has a lot of history.
- Create and end — start a new session, or end a running one, right from the list.
- Collapse — shrink the sidebar to an icon-only rail when you want more room for the main view.
Tip
You can rename a session inline from the sidebar by double-clicking its name (or the pencil icon). Operon auto-names new sessions from their first prompt, so renaming is optional — it is there when a clearer label helps.
The session TabBar
Once you are inside a session, a horizontal row of tabs appears above the content. Each tab is one lens on the same session, and some carry a small count badge — the number of open tasks, timeline events, or pending review comments. The most-used tabs have keyboard shortcuts (see the shortcuts page). The tabs you will reach for most are below.
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview | The session at a glance — mission goal, progress, duration, prompts, files, and cost, with a one-click copy-to-markdown summary. |
| Terminal | The embedded terminal where you drive your AI tool. It stays mounted as you switch tabs, so nothing restarts. |
| Activity | The trace-based view: every prompt grouped with the tool calls, file edits, and responses it produced, with diffs inline. |
| Timeline | A searchable, filterable stream of every event in the session, grouped by prompt. |
| Tasks | A four-column kanban (To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Done) auto-extracted from the conversation. |
| Changes | The in-app git workbench — stage, commit, push, open a PR, and review diffs without leaving Operon. |
| Analytics | Charts for this session: cost, productivity, code impact, tool usage, and quality. |
| Memory | Decisions, plans, and context that persist across sessions for this project. |
Beyond these, a session exposes more specialized tabs — Workflow, Preview, Rollback, Checkpoints, Scope, and Intent — that surface when the corresponding feature is in play. You do not need to learn them up front; they are there when the work calls for them.