Your sidebar
What Heads up and Today are, why things move between them, how sections work, and what the tabs on your phone do
Your sidebar
The column down the left of DorkOS reads as two levels: a heading, and the rows under it. Every heading looks the same and every row starts on the same line, so a channel, a conversation and an agent all line up.
The headings arrive in this order:
- Heads up is what needs you right now.
- Today is what you were working on.
- Your own sections, then Pins, Channels, Direct messages and Agents.
The first two are worked out for you. The rest is the structure you built yourself. A conversation can appear in more than one place at the same time, because each heading answers a different question.
Every heading folds
Click a heading to hide what is under it. Hold Alt (or Option on a Mac) while you click and
the whole panel folds at once.
A folded heading keeps telling you what it is hiding, like "12 · 3 unread". Heads up shows how many things still need you, so folding it can never quietly bury something you have to answer.
Heads up: what needs you
Only four things are allowed in:
- an agent asking permission to do something
- an agent asking you a question
- a session that stopped with an error
- an agent asking you to approve a schedule it wants to run
That is the whole list. Mentions, unread channels, direct messages and background work never appear here. So a Heads up heading with something under it always means something.
It shows up to three at a time, plus a "+ N more" row that takes you to the home page where the full list lives. Agents that are simply busy are summed into one "N working" line rather than a row each. When the last thing needing you is done, Heads up says "All clear" for a moment and then folds away.
Nothing here snoozes. Everything leaves when the thing it is about is resolved, and not before.
On a fresh install, Getting started sits in the same slot and suggests what you have not done yet. Each suggestion retires for good once you have done it. The moment a real signal arrives, Heads up takes the slot back.
Today: what you were doing
Today holds the conversations, channels, direct messages and threads you have actually been in, newest first, about eight of them. The conversation you have open and anything addressed to you by name are always shown, even when that takes the list past eight.
The order is by when you last touched each one. An agent starting a turn, finishing one, or posting a message moves nothing. Your recent conversations stay put while your agents work.
A few other things Today does:
- The conversation you have open is always its first row.
- Rows refuse to reorder while your pointer is inside Today. The row under your cursor is still the row you meant to click.
- Work you did not start, like a scheduled run, sits behind one "+ N automated" row.
- Threads are rows of their own, showing the message they hang off.
Anything you have not touched since 4am leaves Today the next morning. The conversation you have open stays, and so does anything addressed to you by name. Nothing is deleted: it is all still one ⌘K away.
What you built: sections, pins, channels and agents
Below Today is the part nothing moves on its own.
Sections are the groups you make. A section can hold anything you see in the sidebar: a channel, a conversation, an agent, or a mix. Your sections sit at the top of this part of the list, above Pins and Channels, so the thing you organised is the thing you see first. Make one from New › Section, or right-click any row and pick New section.
Some sections fill themselves from a rule you set, like "everything that ran today". The rest you fill by hand, by dragging rows into them.
Pins and the sections you fill by hand keep the order you put them in. Channels and
Direct messages are listed by name, and each one remembers if you would rather sort it by
what happened most recently. That choice lives in the heading's ⋮ menu.
Agents stays short. It shows the agents you have used lately and the ones you pinned, then a single All N agents → row that opens your team page. An agent you have not touched in a month no longer costs a row forever, and "lately" counts the last time you looked at it, not only the last time it ran. If you have eight agents or fewer, you still see all of them.
Headings appear when you have something to put under them. There is no "Direct messages" heading until you have a conversation, and no "Pins" until you pin something.
One way in to each agent
Clicking an agent opens your chat with it, and that is the only place that chat lives. An agent shows up once in the sidebar, never twice.
The same rule runs the New › Group message picker. Pick one agent and you land in that same chat. Pick two or more and you start a group message, and its name grows to include whoever you add, unless you named the conversation yourself.
Your older one-on-one messages are all still there. Nothing was deleted or moved. Whenever one of them has something new for you it shows up under Today, and the agent's own row gets a dot beside it. Find any of them with ⌘K or from the agent's profile. Chats connected from Telegram or Slack keep their own row, because there is a real person on the other end.
Why things move in and out
Heads up and Today are worked out for you. DorkOS decides what is in them, from what needs you and from what you have been doing. That is why you cannot drag a row into either one. If you try, DorkOS says so and tells you what to do instead.
Everything below them is yours. Pin things, gather them into sections, and drag them around inside a pin list or a section you fill by hand. What you arrange there stays arranged.
So the rule is: if you want something to stay in one place, pin it. Everything else comes and goes on its own, and nothing is ever lost when it does.
The card at the bottom
One card sits just above the row of buttons at the bottom, and only ever one. Whatever matters most gets the spot: finishing setup, then an update that is ready, then a question about your work, then a tip.
Every card has an × and hiding one sticks. Your answer is saved to your account rather than to the browser you happened to be using, so a card you hide on your laptop stays hidden on your phone.
Where the old sidebar's things went
| You used to… | Now |
|---|---|
Hunt for the right + to start something | One New button at the top. A heading's + opens it with that item picked |
| Search from memory with ⌘K | A "Jump to anything…" pill under the New button opens the same search |
| Read a row of icons and a version number at the bottom | One slim strip: Home, Team, Marketplace, Connections, and ✦ Ask DorkBot |
| Open Settings or your profile from two places | Each has one door. The … in the footer strip keeps sign-out, theme and help |
| Find your pins, channels, agents and groups | Exactly where you left them. Groups are called sections now |
| Read "Library" above your channels and agents | The word is gone from the screen. Screen readers still hear it |
Two things worth knowing. The version number is gone from the bottom of the sidebar; it lives in the menu at the top now, with a "Check for updates" beside it. When a new version is genuinely waiting, an "Update ready" card appears above the footer strip and goes away once you have it.
And starting your first direct message moved, because the "Direct messages" heading now waits
until you have one. Use New › Group message. Once you have a conversation, the + beside
Direct messages works as it always did.
⌘K finds conversations, channels, agents and pages by name. It does not search inside your messages. Use it to get somewhere, not to find a sentence.
On a phone
Below tablet width there is no sidebar and no slide-out menu. There are four tabs along the bottom instead:
- Home is Heads up and Today together. The number on the tab is the same count Heads up shows, so it only ever means "this many agents are waiting on you".
- All is your sections, channels, direct messages, agents and pins. It never shows a number.
- DorkBot opens a conversation with the assistant that knows how DorkOS works.
- You holds your account and the rest of the app.
Switching tabs keeps your place in each one. Nothing has to be swiped away before you can use what is underneath.
Three things work differently under a thumb:
- Press and hold any row for the same list of actions a right-click gives you on a computer. A press that turns into a scroll never opens it.
- "Catch up" at the top of Today marks every unread channel and direct message in it read, in one tap. It says how many it is about to clear, and it only appears when there is something to clear.
- Approvals appear in Home, with Allow and Don't allow on the card. You can unblock an agent without opening the conversation it came from.
- The card at the bottom of the sidebar appears at the bottom of Home instead.