User Interface Overview
Wardian features a dense local-first interface for watching, directing, and reorganizing the agents you run locally. The current shell keeps live terminals, reusable context, workflow state, Queue evidence, and the agent roster visible while Wardian moves toward the HabitatLayout model of Sites, Cohorts, and movable work surfaces.
🧱 The Layout Architecture
1. Unified Top Bar
The fixed header at the top of the application acts as the global navigation and system telemetry hub.
- Left: Workspace branding and sidebar toggle controls.
- Center (View Switcher): Quickly toggle between primary workspace modes:
- GRID: The primary terminal workspace for live agent interaction.
- DASHBOARD: A summary view of system health and active agent status.
- LIBRARY: Management center for prompts and skills.
- WORKFLOWS: Visual canvas for building automated agent sequences.
- QUEUE / GRAPH / GARDEN: Specialized views for completion triage, communication topology, and spatial agent organization.
- Right (Telemetry): Real-time monitoring of aggregate CPU, Memory, and Active Agent count.
The Graph mode maps agents as status-colored nodes with relationship edges for same team, same project (same repository, following worktrees back to their source), and same folder (same physical checkout). Use the centered relationship lenses to focus the map, and open the inspector or context menu from any node to use the same agent actions available in the roster.
The Garden mode is a spatial canvas for organizing agents and workflows as draggable units (living orbs / pods) you arrange freely. Agent units display live status color; workflow units cluster in a shelf and show run state. Unit positions persist locally across restart. Only actively-processing units animate with a gentle pulse — the default is calm. Full agent session inspection still happens by opening the agent in Grid (Garden routes there), not inside Garden.
2. Left Sidebar (Control & Context)
The Left Sidebar provides the "Context" for your work. It consists of:
- Navigation Rail: Vertical icon strip to switch between sidebar tabs:
- Explorer: Browse the physical files of the selected agent or the Wardian home.
- Source Control: Stage, diff, commit, sync, and manage worktree mode for the selected agent workspace.
- Agent Configuration: Quick settings for spawning and tuning agents.
- Classes: Blueprint editor for reusable agent roles and class-level skills.
- Command: Broadcast text and run starred quick prompts against selected agents.
- Settings: System-wide preferences, theme engine, and the default runtime shell used by agents and shell-based workflows.
- Content Pane: Displays the detailed menu or tree for the active rail icon.
3. Right Sidebar (The Roster)
The Agent Watchlist is your persistent high-fidelity roster for monitoring all active agent instances.
- Status Indicators: Instant visual feedback on agent states (Idle, Processing, Action Needed, Error).
- Thought Stream: A real-time glimpse into the agent's internal monologue and current task progress.
- Watchlists: Organize agents into logical groups (e.g., "Dev Team", "Security Audit") for easier oversight.
Agent Cloning
Use the single-agent roster context menu to create Fresh, Profile, or Custom clones. Clicking Clone directly starts a Fresh Clone immediately. The Fresh Clone submenu option keeps visible setup and starts a clean provider session. Profile Clone also keeps agent-local profile files and instance skills. Custom Clone opens a modal where you can change the clone name, provider engine, agent class, workspace path, and choose which eligible agent-local files and instance skills to keep.
🖱️ Interaction Patterns
"Physical-First" Navigation
Wardian mirrors your local file system. Most items in the Library or Explorer correspond to physical files on your disk (<wardian-home>/), ensuring your work is transparent and portable.
Contextual Awareness
The interface is reactive. Selecting an agent in the Roster (Right Sidebar) will automatically re-root the Explorer (Left Sidebar) to that agent's specific working directory.
Terminal Continuity
Wardian preserves terminal state across grid remounts so interactive TUIs, including Codex, keep their visible screen and scrollback more faithfully when panes are resized, reordered, or reattached. The terminal layer also forwards xterm's raw binary mouse-report input to the PTY so alternate-screen TUIs can handle wheel-driven in-app scrolling the same way they do in native terminals.
Keyboard Shortcuts
- Ctrl + Tab: Cycle through main View Modes.
- Ctrl + Shift + Tab: Cycle through main View Modes in reverse.
- Ctrl + B: Toggle the Left Sidebar visibility.