Keybindings¶

Input¶

General¶

While the agent is responding, Enter queues your prompt to run next. Ctrl+Enter or Ctrl+Q steers the response currently in progress. Press Enter on an empty prompt to send the next queued message immediately, or Esc to bring queued messages back into the prompt for editing. A second Esc cancels the running turn. Queued user messages run before goal auto-continue.

Terminal setup¶

Some terminals and multiplexers need a little configuration for modified Enter keys and Command-key bindings.

Ghostty:

keybind = shift+enter=csi:13;2u
keybind = ctrl+enter=csi:13;5u
keybind = cmd+z=csi:122;9u
keybind = cmd+shift+z=csi:122;10u

The cmd+z bindings send CSI-u sequences that preserve the Command/Super and Shift modifiers. Without them, terminals may send Esc z, which Smelt cannot distinguish from Alt+Z.

tmux:

set -s extended-keys always
set -s extended-keys-format csi-u

Cursor¶

Editing¶

Ctrl+Y and the vim p / P commands share the system clipboard with the internal kill ring: yanking pushes to both, and pasting prefers external clipboard text if it changed since the last yank.

Selection (non-vim)¶

Drag with the mouse in the prompt or transcript to select text. Releasing the drag copies the selection to the clipboard. While dragging the status bar shows a temporary VISUAL indicator.

Double-click selects a word in normal text or a table cell in rendered Markdown tables. Triple-click selects a line in normal text or the whole rendered table block when the click lands inside a table.

Modes¶

Smelt has four agent modes: normal, plan, apply, and yolo. Each has its own permission defaults. The active mode is shown in the status bar. Cycle with Shift+Tab. Bindings can be scoped to a specific mode through the Lua API (smelt.keymap.set); see the Customization guide.

Vim Mode¶

Set settings.vim = true in config to enable vim mode. If you already live in Vim, this keeps your muscle memory intact: navigate the transcript, edit the prompt, and select text with the same chords you use in your editor. Supports insert, normal, and visual modes. In normal mode, several emacs-style keys take on their vim meanings:

Full vim support: motions, operators (d, c, y), text objects (iw, a(…), find (f, t, F, T, ;, ,), and commands (x, s, r, p, u, ~, J, etc.). Prompt visual selections scope submit/steer actions to the selection.

Yank / paste are mirrored with the system clipboard: y / yy / d / x push to the clipboard, and p / P read from it. If the clipboard was updated externally since your last yank, p pastes the external text (charwise); otherwise vim's linewise flag from yy is preserved.

Transcript¶

Focus the transcript with Ctrl+W then h / j / k / l / p / w (any direction toggles). The transcript shares the same keymap as the prompt: arrows, Ctrl+P / Ctrl+N, PgUp / PgDn, Ctrl+V / Alt+V, Alt+< / Alt+>, Home / End, Cmd+C, and shift-extended selection variants all work. Editing chords are silently dropped on the read-only transcript buffer. Ctrl+C returns focus to the prompt. Enter toggles folds; vim-style za / zo / zc / zR / zM also work. Ctrl+click opens transcript links, email addresses, and file paths; in vim mode, use gf.

With vim enabled the full vim engine runs on the transcript (motions, y to yank, v / V visual selection, Ctrl+B / Ctrl+F / Ctrl+U / Ctrl+D / Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+E viewport scrolling).

Cmdline (:)¶

Vim-style cmdline (:q, :wq, etc.) supports tab completion over registered commands.

Completer (slash / file pickers)¶

The completer pops up when typing / (commands) or @ (file references).

Dialogs¶

Common¶

Per-Dialog¶

Esc Chords¶

Bindings that start with Esc are treated as a chord: press Esc, then the next key within the chord window to complete it. The built-in Esc Esc cancels active work or rewinds the last turn when idle. Define your own chords (any length) with smelt.keymap.set; see the Customization guide.

Custom Keybindings¶

Bind any chord from Lua with smelt.keymap.set(mode, chord, handler). Modes are "n", "i", "v", or "" (every mode). Examples ship with the distribution. See docs/lua-examples/mode_keybinds.lua and runtime/lua/smelt/plugins/esc_chord.lua for working patterns.