Using the Browser

The browser mirrors the desktop's layout and its two-mode keyboard model, so what you already know about FlightDeck applies. This page covers where the browser differs, and why.

Keyboard

Like the desktop, the browser has App mode and Terminal mode. In Terminal mode every key belongs to the agent; in App mode plain keys drive FlightDeck.

Key	Mode	Action
`Ctrl-g`	both	Command palette
`Enter`	App	Enter the focused terminal
`Esc`	Terminal	Back to App mode
`↑` `↓`	App	Move between sessions
`←` `→`	App	Move between split panes
`a`	App	Activity feed
`?`	App	Help & keybindings
`s`	App	Sidebar slide-over (below 900px only)
`r`	—	Reconnect, when disconnected

Why the terminal is letterboxed

The host owns the PTY geometry. Rather than scaling the host's grid to fit your window, the browser letterboxes it and names the geometry in a chip in the git bar.

This is a deliberate trade: crisp type is the one thing a browser does better than a terminal, and upscaling a bitmap grid would throw it away. If the host's grid is wider than your viewport the stage scrolls — it is never cropped silently.

Reconnecting, and missed output

Each terminal keeps a replay ring buffer on the host (256 KiB by default, set by replay_bytes). A reconnecting tab resumes from a byte cursor within that buffer.

If the session produced more output than the host kept, the browser says so rather than showing a terminal with an invisible hole in it. It also reports how stale the picture is and the round-trip time to the host, and shows replay arriving with real progress.

Keystrokes you type while reconnecting are held and delivered in order, not dropped.

Any number of browsers can hold a writing seat, and the desktop is always one of them. Two people typing into one terminal would otherwise interleave keystrokes and look like a bug in the agent, so FlightDeck arbitrates with a soft input lock:

Whoever types takes the turn, and keeps it until they pause.
Someone typing into another person's burst is told so, by name, instead of having their keystrokes spliced in or silently dropped.
If you need the terminal now, taking over is one confirmed click — and it takes nobody's seat away. The interrupted writer gets the turn back as soon as you pause.
No surface has priority, the desktop included.

Take Input Lock in the palette is the explicit override.

Every surface shows the same seat list — who is connected, who may type, who is typing right now, and which row is you — live, as people come and go. The desktop's status bar carries the same information as a chip, so you can tell from the machine itself that a browser is mid-sentence.

Dialogs are shared

A dialog opens on both surfaces at once, tagged with who opened it, and either surface can answer it. A question from an agent is not trapped on whichever surface happened to be in front when it arrived.

Git from the browser

Push, finish / local merge and rebase worktree all work from the browser, and they refuse in the same words the desktop would use — a dirty base or a missing upstream reads as itself rather than as a generic failure.

The read-only git panel carries the branch, base, drift, dirty state, ahead/behind and the GitHub compare URL. Where a fact is unknown it says so rather than showing a zero: no upstream means no ahead/behind row at all, and no compare URL means no link rather than one guessed from the branch name.

Destructive commands ask twice

Abandon Worktree, Rebase Worktree and Quit each take a second step from a browser: you type the session's name exactly — no trimming, no case folding.

Getting it wrong refuses and changes nothing. Cancelling is never gated, at either step.

The desktop's own dialogs are unchanged. It is the remoteness that earns the second step, not the command — a browser is not the machine the damage lands on.

Host-only commands

Commands whose effect lands on the machine FlightDeck is running on — opening a worktree in the file manager, launching $EDITOR — stay visible with a host only badge rather than being hidden. A missing command is more confusing than an honest one. Pull Base is desktop-only for the same reason, and says so.

On a tablet

Below 900px the sidebar becomes a slide-over (s in App mode, or the chip in the project row) and the git bar folds into the status bar. The terminal still letterboxes and is still never scaled.