Overview

Mel is a terminal first. Every command you run gets a real PTY underneath — bash, zsh, fish, whatever $SHELL points at — and everything Mel adds (blocks, chips, panes, the palette, the agent) is layered on top of that ordinary shell session.

Commands become blocks

Each command you run becomes a block: the command line, its full ANSI-colored output, its working directory, timing, and a success/failure status, grouped as one unit. Blocks are selectable, filterable, bookmarkable, and carry a right-click action menu. Start with Blocks, then Block actions and Filtering.

The prompt

The input bar at the bottom of every pane does more than accept keystrokes:

• Ghost autocomplete from your session, shell history, and the filesystem — press → to accept.
• The /COMMANDS slash menu (/agent, /conversations, /prompts, and more) — see Input and the prompt.
• The Up-arrow command history picker with Commands and Prompts tabs.
• ctrl+enter starts an agent conversation carrying whatever you've typed.

Chips

Above the input, terminal chips show live context for the pane: the active Node/Python/Rust/Go runtime, the current directory, and the git branch with a change count. Chips are interactive — click the Node chip to switch versions via nvm, click the branch to check out another one.

Panes and tabs

Split any pane with ctrl+D (right) or ctrl+shift+D (down) — each split is a fully independent session with its own shell, cwd, and history. Tabs (ctrl+T) hold whole pane layouts, and every pane gets its own row in the sidebar rail. You can capture a favorite layout as a reusable tab config in TOML, including per-pane directories and startup commands.

• Split panes
• Tabs
• Sessions

The command palette

ctrl+P opens the command palette — a fuzzy-searchable registry of every bound action in Mel, with shortcuts shown inline. If you forget a keybinding, the palette is the answer.

Where to go next