Workspaces & the canvas

Every workspace is one borderless, infinite canvas. Panels float at fixed positions in canvas space, and you move a viewport over them — so the whole layout scales smoothly as you zoom, and there is always more room to spread out.

A faint grid in the background helps you line things up. Click any empty area to clear the current focus.

There are a few natural ways to move around:

• Pan with a two-finger trackpad scroll, or by holding the right mouse button and dragging. A right-drag releases with a little inertia so it feels physical.
• Zoom by holding Cmd/Ctrl and scrolling — up to zoom in, down to zoom out. Zoom is anchored to your cursor.

Or use the keyboard:

• Cmd/Ctrl= zoom in, Cmd/Ctrl- zoom out.
• Cmd/CtrlShift0 reset to 100%.
• Cmd/CtrlShift1 zoom to fit every panel in view.

Add panels from the Panel Library (Cmd/CtrlShiftE), the Command Palette (Cmd/CtrlK), or by right-clicking empty canvas. New panels are placed at a free spot and focused automatically.

• Focus a panel by clicking its title bar — it gains a glow and rises to the top.
• Move it by dragging the title bar; resize from any of the eight handles around it.
• Maximize or restore by double-clicking the title bar.
• Close the focused panel with Cmd/CtrlW, or delete it with Cmd/CtrlBackspace.
• Cycle focus with Ctrl` and CtrlShift`, or open the Panel Switcher with CtrlSpace.

As a canvas fills up, you can organize it. Click and drag on empty canvas to marquee-select panels, or Cmd/CtrlA to select everything.

• Group into a region with Cmd/CtrlG — a labelled, colored container that visually groups panels. Dissolve regions with Cmd/CtrlShiftG.
• Auto Layout (Cmd/CtrlShiftL) tidies panels into a non-overlapping arrangement. If panels are selected, only those are rearranged.
• Right-click empty canvas for quick actions: new panels, a region, a text note, or paste (a URL becomes a browser, plain text becomes a sticky note).

Three light pieces of chrome float over the canvas, one in each lower corner and along the left edge, so the controls you reach for are always to hand without crowding your work:

• The build rail (left edge) — the Panel Library button plus your pinned panel types, for spawning panels with one click. See Panels overview.
• The navigation cluster (bottom-right) — a minimap stacked above a zoom pill (zoom out, the current percentage, zoom in, and zoom-to-fit). The minimap is a bird’s-eye view of every panel and region with a rectangle marking where you are looking; click to jump there, drag its corner to resize, or toggle it with Cmd/CtrlShiftM.
• The voice center (bottom-center) — the home of Ask Deska, where you type or talk to the assistant.

Panels do not have to float separately. Inside a canvas node you can combine panels into tab stacks and splits — handy for keeping, say, two editors or an editor and its terminal in one tidy block.

• Drag a tab onto a split divider to split the node; drag onto the center to merge.
• The + button on a tab strip adds one more panel of the active tab’s type. The split button lets you choose a direction and a panel type.
• Drag a tab out to pop it into its own floating node or a separate window.

Each project gets its own workspace — a separate canvas with its own panels, zoom and viewport. The workspace rail down the left edge lists them as colored tiles. Create, rename, recolor, reorder or close workspaces from there.

• Click a tile to switch, or jump straight to one with Cmd/Ctrl1 through Cmd/Ctrl9 (and Cmd/Ctrl0 for the tenth), matching the rail order.
• Cycle with CtrlTab and CtrlShiftTab.
• Give each workspace a color and an icon — a curated set of glyphs tinted in your accent color — so it is recognizable at a glance in the rail.

When you are juggling several projects, press Cmd/CtrlShiftP for the workspace overview — a full-screen board where every workspace is a card showing a live mini-canvas of its panels, its name, the current git branch and whether an agent is running inside it.

• Click a card to jump into that workspace.
• Filter the board by Active (has panels), Agents (something is running) or Dormant (empty) to find the one you want.
• Create, rename, duplicate or delete a workspace right from the board.

Need a panel on a second monitor? Drag a tab or a whole dock zone out of the main window to open it as its own window. It stays in sync and re-docks when you close it.

Everything persists automatically. Panel positions, sizes, zoom, dock layout, terminal scrollback, editor state and browser history are saved per workspace and restored when you reopen Deska — no save button required.

Deska can quietly keep a rolling history of your canvas layout. With snapshots enabled, it saves the arrangement of your panels and regions in the background — a few seconds after things settle — and keeps the most recent ones per workspace, oldest rolling off as new ones arrive.

Turn on the time scrubber and a slider appears over the canvas. Drag it back and each stop previews an earlier layout, labelled with how long ago it was and how many panels it held; let go and Deska asks before restoring that arrangement, so you never replace your current layout by accident. Release at the far right to stay in the present.