Chat Dock

The chat dock gives you a clean conversation view beside the terminal. Press Cmd + Y and crystl opens the focused shard’s transcript as chat, with the composer ready to type.

The terminal is still there. The dock simply reads the agent conversation from its structured transcript, so a busy TUI or an unfamiliar terminal renderer doesn’t get between you and the conversation.

Opening the dock

You have three ways in:

• Press Cmd + Y.
• Choose the chat dock from the View menu.
• Click the chat button in the shard bar.

Use the same shortcut, the close button, or the shard-bar button to close it. If you switch gems or shards while the dock is open, it follows the focused shard.

Reading and replying

Messages are rendered from the same transcript that powers crystl history and the conversation history tools. New agent output appears as the turn runs, and the composer sends your reply back to that shard.

Plain Return sends. Shift + Return adds a new line. See keyboard shortcuts for the same behavior across crystl’s other text boxes.

An open approval or agent question appears inline above the composer. Answering it uses the same underlying request as the floating panel, so resolving it in either place clears the other.

Tool calls

Tool calls have their own rows. Click one to expand its full input and output, then use the copy button when you need the complete result. Click again to collapse it.

On Prism, you can also click a collapsed … +N lines (click to expand) row in the terminal and crystl opens the dock with that exact tool call expanded. See tool calls for the matching rules.

Terminal renderer independence

The dock reads the transcript, not terminal pixels. It works with both Prism and xterm, even though click-to-expand rows inside the terminal require Prism.

That makes Cmd + Y the reliable fallback whenever you want the conversation without depending on what the terminal surface can recognize.