gh-agent-viz

UI Features

Comprehensive guide to the visual features in gh-agent-viz.

Kanban Board View

Press K to toggle the kanban board layout. The board organizes sessions into four status columns:

Column	Statuses
Running	Active and queued sessions
Needs Input	Sessions waiting for human action
Completed	Successfully finished sessions
Failed	Sessions that errored out

Navigation

• h / l — move between columns
• j / k — move within a column
• enter — open session details

When to use it

The kanban view is most useful when you are monitoring many concurrent agent sessions across repositories. It gives you a fast visual overview of where sessions are in their lifecycle without scrolling through a flat list.

Press K again to return to the default list view.

Toast Notifications

Toast notifications appear as temporary overlays in the top-right corner of the terminal when session statuses change between refreshes.

Behavior

• Trigger: A session changes status (e.g., running → completed, running → needs input) between automatic or manual refreshes.
• Auto-dismiss: Each toast disappears after 5 seconds.
• Stacking: Up to 3 toasts are visible at once. Newer toasts push older ones down.
• Initial load: No toasts fire on the first data load — they only appear for status changes.

Toasts help you notice important transitions (especially failures or input-needed events) without having to actively watch the session list.

Session Timeline Bar

The session timeline bar is a compact Unicode visualization of a session’s lifecycle. It appears in the detail view (both full-screen and split-pane modes).

How to read it

The bar spans from the session’s created timestamp to now:

Character	Meaning
░	Idle — session exists but is not actively running
▓	Completed active — work was happening during this interval
█	Running active — session is currently executing

Example:

░░░░▓▓▓▓▓▓████
^              ^
created        now

This session was idle briefly, then ran actively, and is currently still running.

Time range

• Start: session created_at timestamp
• End: current time (now)
• The bar width scales to fit the available terminal width.

Dependency Graph

The dependency graph visualizes relationships between sessions. It appears in the detail view when related sessions are detected.

How relationships are detected

Sessions are considered related when they share:

• Same repository — sessions targeting the same owner/repo
• Branch prefixes — branches sharing a common prefix (e.g., feature/auth-login and feature/auth-signup)

Notation

Relationships are rendered using box-drawing characters:

┌─ Add login endpoint (running)
├─ Add signup flow (completed)
└─ Fix auth tests (needs input)

Parent-child or sibling relationships are inferred from branch naming and repository context. The graph is informational — it does not imply execution order or blocking dependencies.

Color Themes

gh-agent-viz supports multiple color themes to match your terminal aesthetic.

Available themes

Theme	Description
default	Adaptive theme that auto-detects light/dark terminal background
catppuccin-mocha	Warm pastel theme from the Catppuccin palette
dracula	Dark theme with vibrant accents
tokyo-night	Cool-toned dark theme inspired by Tokyo Night
solarized-light	Light theme using the Solarized Light palette

Configuration

Set the theme in ~/.gh-agent-viz.yml:

theme: catppuccin-mocha

Adaptive default

When no theme is specified (or theme: default), gh-agent-viz queries your terminal’s background color and selects appropriate contrast levels automatically. This works in most modern terminals (iTerm2, Ghostty, Kitty, Windows Terminal, etc.).

Live Log Tailing

Live log tailing streams agent session logs in real time, similar to tail -f.

How to activate

1. Highlight a running session in the session list.
2. Press l to open the log viewer.
3. Press f to enable follow mode.

Follow mode

When follow mode is active:

• A LIVE 🔴 indicator appears in the log viewer header.
• New log lines are fetched every 2 seconds via gh agent-task view <id> --log --follow.
• The viewport automatically scrolls to the bottom as new lines arrive.
• Press f again to disable follow mode and browse the log freely.

Log viewer keys (while viewing logs)

Key	Action
f	Toggle follow mode
j / ↓	Scroll down one line
k / ↑	Scroll up one line
d	Page down
u	Page up
g	Jump to top
G	Jump to bottom
esc	Return to session list

Filter Tabs

The header shows filter tabs that organize sessions by status.

Tab behavior

Tab	Shows	When it matters
ATTENTION	needs-input and failed sessions only	Something is waiting on you
RUNNING	Active sessions (running, queued)	Sessions currently working
DONE	Completed sessions	Finished work
FAILED	Failed sessions	Errors to investigate
ALL	Everything	Full overview

Smart default tab

On startup, the UI picks the most useful tab automatically:

1. ATTENTION — if there are sessions waiting on you
2. RUNNING — if there are active sessions
3. ALL — fallback when nothing is active

What “needs attention” means

Only two statuses trigger the ATTENTION tab:

• needs-input — the agent has explicitly asked a question and is blocked waiting for your answer
• failed — the agent hit an error and stopped

Idle running sessions (e.g., an agent that finished responding and is waiting for your next message) show up under RUNNING with a 💤 idle badge. This is a known limitation — the data source doesn’t distinguish “agent actively working” from “agent waiting for the user to continue.” See #121 for discussion.

Follow mode is only available for sessions with status running. For completed or failed sessions, the log viewer shows the full static log.

Conversation View

Press c to open the conversation view from the session list, detail view, or log view. This renders the session’s dialogue as styled chat bubbles.

Layout

• User messages are left-aligned.
• Agent messages are right-aligned.
• Tool executions are shown inline between messages.

Requirements

Conversation view only works for local-copilot sessions that have event logs on disk (~/.copilot/session-state/). Remote agent-task sessions do not expose conversation-level data.

Navigation

Key	Action
j / ↓	Scroll down
k / ↑	Scroll up
d	Page down
u	Page up
g	Jump to top
G	Jump to bottom
esc	Return to previous view

Tool Timeline

Press t to open the tool timeline from the session list or detail view. This shows a chronological trace of every tool execution in the session.

Icons

Icon	Tool type
🔧	bash
✏️	edit
📄	view
🔍	search
📤	git
🧪	test
⚙️	other

Requirements

Tool timeline is only available for local-copilot sessions with event logs.

Diff View

Press d to open the PR diff from the session list or detail view. The diff is rendered with syntax-aware coloring directly in the TUI.

Color coding

• Green — added lines
• Red — deleted lines
• Cyan — hunk headers (@@ lines)

PR discovery

For local sessions, diff view discovers the associated PR by looking up the session’s branch name. This works even for merged PRs. While the diff is loading, the UI shows 🔄 Loading diff....

Mission Control

Press M to toggle the mission control dashboard. This provides a high-level fleet overview across all monitored repositories.

Sections

• Fleet summary — aggregate session counts (active, idle, done, failed) with a proportional bar chart.
• Per-repo breakdown — active/idle/done/failed counts for each repository.
• Needs your attention — surfaces sessions with needs-input or failed status for quick triage.

Navigation

Key	Action
j / ↓	Move to next repo
k / ↑	Move to previous repo
M	Return to session list

Help Overlay

Press ? to toggle a full keybinding reference overlay. The overlay works in all view modes.

Sections

The help overlay organizes shortcuts by category:

• Navigation — movement and selection
• Actions — open PR, resume session, dismiss, refresh
• Views — logs, conversation, diff, kanban, mission control
• Groups — group-by mode, expand/collapse
• Log View — follow mode, scrolling
• Meta — repo link, file issue, quit

Meta Shortcuts

Key	Action
!	Open the gh-agent-viz repository in your browser
@	File a new issue against gh-agent-viz in your browser

PR Integration for Local Sessions

Local Copilot CLI sessions on feature branches can automatically discover their associated pull request.

How it works

• Press o to open the PR in your browser. The PR is discovered by looking up the session’s branch name via the GitHub API.
• Sessions on feature branches show a PR tag in the meta line of the session card.
• Main/master branches are skipped — PR discovery only runs for feature branches.
• Works for both open and merged pull requests.

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