Computers: one desk per machine

Deska can work on more than the machine in front of you: another computer you own with Deska installed, or a Deska Cloud box we run for you. Each one is a place, not a setting. Switching to it swaps the whole desk: the project list, the project you land on, its canvas, its panels, its tasks and its notes.

Nothing is torn down when you switch. Terminals on this machine keep running here; terminals on the box were always running there. You changed which desk you are looking at, not what is executing.

Use the computer switcher in the crumb, or Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+1..9 to jump to the Nth machine — the same gesture as Cmd/Ctrl+1..9 for projects, with one more modifier. Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+→ bounces to the machine you were on before.

A folder only exists on one computer, so a project does too. The rail lists the projects of the machine you are standing on and nothing else — you will not find a box’s folder in your laptop’s list, because opening it there would point at a path that does not exist.

To begin a project on a machine, use Start from. It offers three doors, and the machine answers all three: open a folder it already has, clone one of the repositories its own GitHub login can reach, or clone from a link you paste. You never have to know that computer’s paths, and the machine decides where a clone lands. On a desk with nothing open the same three sit under that computer’s recent projects, in one list headed Open a project.

When a door cannot answer, it says why and offers something to press. A box that is asleep says so and offers to wake it, then lists your repositories once it is up. A machine that is not signed in to GitHub offers the sign-in, which runs on that computer so the credential never leaves it. A machine without the GitHub CLI says that instead of offering a sign-in that cannot run, and points at the git link door, which clones without it. Under every one of these the other ways to start a project stay on screen.

Inside the folder door, search finds projects by name and browsing is always there under it: the machine lists its own folders level by level, so a folder the search does not surface is still one tap away. A brand-new computer with nothing on it says so and offers the ways out in place — clone a repository, clone from a link, or New folder, which makes an empty project folder (with a fresh git repository, where the machine allows one) right where you are standing and opens it.

What is open on a computer belongs to that computer. If five terminals are running on your cloud box, you see the same five on your laptop, the same five on a second computer that has never opened it before, and the same five on your phone. Open one and you join the terminal that is already running — you do not start a sixth.

Panels Deska cannot yet show on a phone are still listed by name, so the two screens never disagree about how many things are open on one machine. Renaming a panel travels to the machine, so every screen picks up the new name.

A task belongs to the computer that ran it, because Dex is the agent CLI signed in on that machine. The Inbox shows one machine’s work — the one you are standing on — never a merge of two, which would be a list where half the rows point at folders that are not there.

Notes follow the same rule. A note is a markdown file, and it lives on the computer you wrote it on. Walk to another machine and the library is that machine’s.

A Deska Cloud box arrives with Claude Code, Codex, opencode and the GitHub CLI already installed, and signed into nothing. Signing them in happens on that computer: you get a page to open and a short code to type, the sign-in runs over there, and the screen finishes by itself the moment the computer confirms it. The credential is stored there. It never passes through Deska.

Open the computer in the desktop app or on your phone and pick Accounts. Each row says whether it is signed in and as whom, and a signed-in row can be disconnected again from the same place. Disconnecting runs that tool’s own sign-out on the machine and then checks: if the tool is somehow still signed in, the row says so instead of pretending.

One agent is enough for the computer to work — the three are alternatives, not a checklist. GitHub is not required either, but without it the machine can write code and has nowhere to push it.

opencode is the one exception to the row: its sign-in asks which provider to use, in a screen of its own, so it hands you a terminal on that machine instead of a page.

A Deska Cloud box suspends itself when nobody is using it, which is what keeps it cheap. Its desk is not blank while it sleeps: the projects and panels are still there to look at, because they are on its disk. It is read-only — nothing new can start until it wakes.

A line at the top of the desk says so, with the one action that changes it. Waking takes a few seconds while the machine boots and registers; Deska keeps checking until it reports itself online.

You can wake it from anywhere it appears: the desktop, the phone, or the Deska Cloud panel on your account page, which lists the machine, whether it is awake and where it runs.

A machine that is simply offline says that instead, and says plainly that its work is still there when it comes back. See Remote access for reaching your computers from the web and the phone.