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Input & prompt

The prompt bar: typing commands, ghost autocomplete, and the slash menu.

The prompt bar at the bottom of every pane is where terminal commands, agent conversations, and Mel's built-in commands all start. It's a single input: type a shell command and press enter to run it, or press ctrl+enter (cmd+enter on macOS) to open an agent conversation carrying whatever you've typed.

Anatomy

From top to bottom, the prompt area shows:

  • The chip bar — runtime, directory, and git context pills.
  • The input itself, with ghost autocomplete rendered after your text.
  • A hint row — ctrl ↵ new /agent conversation, which becomes ctrl shift Y to continue conversation after you've wrapped an agent conversation in this pane.

Pressing ctrl+up-arrow attaches the last finished block — command plus output — into the prompt as agent context, ready to send.

The /COMMANDS slash menu

Type / at the start of the input and a command menu opens above the prompt. Keep typing to filter, use up/down to navigate, enter to run, esc to clear. The registry:

CommandWhat it does
/agentStart a new agent conversation (same as ctrl+enter)
/orchestrate-agentLead a team of Mel agents to build something
/orchestrate-cliLead a team of CLI agents (claude/codex) to build
/conversationsOpen the conversation history picker
/planStart a conversation where the agent researches and writes a plan first
/promptsSearch your saved prompts in Mel Drive
/modelStart a conversation and switch its model (via the model chip)
/open-fileOpen a file in Mel's code editor via the file explorer

The menu only appears when the text after / matches a command — absolute paths like /usr/bin/ls still run as ordinary commands.

Drag and drop file paths

Drag a file from the Tools panel project explorer onto the prompt and Mel inserts its relative path at the cursor, with a transient "File · Argument" hint above the input. Dropping onto a running CLI agent session pastes the absolute path into that agent's input instead.

Workflow argument selection

Clicking a workflow in Mel Drive inserts its command into the prompt with the first {argument} placeholder pre-selected, so you type straight over it. Saved prompts insert their body the same way.

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