Workspaces

A workspace is a named tiling layout of panes. Each workspace is independent — switching workspaces swaps the entire screen. Think of them as virtual desktops for your development tasks.

Creating workspaces

Press Alt+N, or click the + button in the workspace tab bar. New workspaces start with a single Selection pane — a launcher with four options: New Agent, New Terminal, Browser, and Open File. Empty slots in a layout show the same launcher.

Switching workspaces

(All workspace chords are Alt-based, so they work everywhere — including browser and roam modes, where the browser owns Ctrl+Tab.)

Finding work that needs attention

Open the Home panel from the toolbar, or press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+M, for an overview of every workspace and pane in the current window. This is the quickest way to check several agents and terminals without switching through every workspace.

Activity indicators appear beside panes in Home and roll up to their workspace tabs:

• An animated dotted indicator means work is still running in that pane.
• A solid blue dot means the pane is idle, but its completed work has not yet been acknowledged. This usually appears when an agent or terminal finishes while you are working somewhere else.
• No indicator means the pane is idle and has nothing waiting for review.

The blue dot is therefore an attention marker, not a running indicator. Select the pane from Home to jump directly to it; viewing and interacting with the pane acknowledges the result and clears the marker. Home shows the marker on the specific pane, while the workspace tab keeps the rolled-up marker until every pane needing attention in that workspace has been reviewed.

Organizing tabs

• Rename — double-click a tab. Good names reflect the task: "frontend auth", "API endpoints", "debugging".
• Color — right-click a tab to assign a color (the same palette as bookmarks).
• Reorder — drag tabs along the strip; it scrolls when crowded.
• Pin / manage — the Home panel lists every workspace with a Pin / Rename / Close menu.

What's saved

Every workspace is saved automatically:

• Pane layout — the tiling grid and proportions
• Pane state — agent conversations, terminal history, open files
• Reading position — agent and terminal panes return to where you left off
• Focus — which pane was active

When you relaunch hob, all workspaces are restored exactly as you left them — see Checkpoints.

Saved workspace snapshots

Automatic persistence keeps your current workspaces up to date. To preserve a particular layout as a named, point-in-time snapshot, open the workspace tab's menu and choose Save workspace. You can reopen saved layouts from the Workspaces tab in Saved, organize them into folders, and attach notes.

Closing workspaces

Close a workspace with the X on its tab, by middle-clicking the tab, or with Alt+Q. Close all workspaces with Alt+Shift+Q. The panes are removed but agent conversations are preserved in Activity, and a closed workspace can be restored with undo. Closing your last workspace immediately opens a fresh one, so you always have at least one.

Multi-window

hob supports multiple windows (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+N). Each window has its own set of workspaces. On launch, all windows are restored — including their positions and sizes.