Managing Work

A single prompt and reply handles a small task. Larger work (a multi-step change, a research pass, several concurrent tasks) needs a way to see what is happening and what is left. The sidebar, todos, and jobs give you that view.

The sidebar sits on the right side of the screen and shows the live state of your session in four panes:

Session. Your current model and facet.
Flagged files. Files the model or Polytoken has marked as important to the work at hand.
Async jobs. Background work currently running.
Todos. The task list for the work in progress.

Retract the sidebar like a drawer when you want the full width for the conversation, and open it again to see the panes.

The flagged-files pane reflects choices the model and Polytoken make, not choices you control. The plan facet, for instance, flags the plan the model is working from. Polytoken marks a flagged file in one of two ways: it keeps the file’s contents alongside the session, or it records the file by name alone. Sessions explains what that distinction does.

Mini mode

When the terminal is too narrow to show the sidebar and the conversation side by side, Polytoken switches to mini mode. The sidebar starts retracted so the conversation has the full width, and a small toggle by the prompt opens it. Because there is no room beside the conversation, an open sidebar in mini mode floats over it rather than narrowing it. Make the terminal wide enough again and the sidebar returns to its docked layout.

Todos

A todo is one task in a list. The model uses todos to track work that takes several steps: as it works, it adds todos, marks each one in progress, and completes them. You can edit the list yourself: add, change, complete, or remove items. You and the model both read and shape the same list.

Each todo has a status (pending, in progress, done, or blocked), and a todo can depend on others. Polytoken enforces those dependencies: a todo cannot become in progress or done until everything it depends on is done, and you cannot delete a todo that others depend on.

The todos pane shows the list. Typing /todo opens it in full. The list belongs to the session: it carries through compacting and clearing unchanged, and a rewind restores it to the point you return to. See Sessions.

Jobs

A job is work running in the background while you keep going. The common kind is a subagent, a separate agent the model starts to handle a bounded task. A job can also be a shell command left to run on its own.

A job moves through states as it runs: working, completed, failed, or cancelled. The async jobs pane shows what is active, and typing /jobs opens the full view with each job’s status and output. You can cancel a running job from there. You do not start jobs yourself; the model starts them.

For how the model uses subagents, see Subagents.