Work and threads¶

Work is the center of Desktop. Select a workspace in the left sidebar, choose New thread, and give Colossus a task. The composer shows the selected model, permission mode, and run mode before you send.

Start a task¶

Choose a mode beside the composer:

Write a concrete request, including any limits that matter, and press Enter or the send button. Shift+Enter adds a new line. You can attach a supported PNG, JPEG, WebP, UTF-8 text, or source file with the paperclip. Desktop shows a thread in the selected workspace as soon as the run starts. Tool effects still follow that workspace's access and approval settings.

Pasting more than 1,000 characters into the message box shows a short Pasted Content placeholder, as in the TUI. The full text remains part of the draft, counts toward the prompt size limit, and is sent in place of the placeholder. You can write before or after it or paste more text. Deleting or changing a placeholder removes its hidden text from the draft.

For a first task, try asking the agent to explain the repository without changing files. To inspect its response and evidence, open Session views.

Guide a run in progress¶

When Colossus is working, you can type another message without losing your draft:

• Queue puts the follow-up in Next up after the current response.
• Redirect stops the current response and sends your new guidance next.
• Stop cancels the current response and pauses queued messages. Your unsent draft remains. Choose Resume queue when you want the queued work to continue.

The queue and its pause are part of the current Desktop session. For work that must survive an interruption, use a durable plan or task and return to its session later.

The permission selector beside the composer controls what happens when an effect needs approval. Ask shows an approval card. Deny fails such effects closed. Risk auto evaluates eligible low-risk effects, while Full access satisfies approval obligations without prompting. Expanding authority requires a native operating-system confirmation. This selector does not change the workspace's access profile or execution boundary. See the full access model.

Return to a conversation¶

Select a thread in the sidebar to read its released messages and continue it. Use Search threads to find a conversation in This Workspace or All Workspaces. The search can include archived workspaces and threads when you enable that option. Load older threads retrieves more history as needed.

Open a thread's More actions menu to rename, pin or unpin, and archive it. Pinned threads stay easy to reach; archived threads remain searchable and can be restored. You can also rename or archive a workspace from its menu, then restore it from Manage Workspaces. Switching workspaces changes the active managed runtime and closes local terminal sessions tied to the previous workspace.

Use a Desktop command¶

Type / at the start of the composer to open Desktop's command menu. Use Up/Down to choose a suggestion, Tab to complete it, Escape to close the menu, and Enter to run a complete command. Commands such as /plan, /execute, /research, /new, /resume, /work, /agents, /artifacts, /connections, /settings, and /tui navigate or change Desktop's local UI state. Desktop handles them itself; it does not send an unknown slash command to the model.

The bundled Terminal UI has a larger command set. Its plan approval and execution commands are not substitutes for the authenticated Plan actions in Desktop.

Next step¶

Use Session views to inspect what happened, or open Tools to work with files and outputs beside the conversation.