Blobs, stage and sidebar

Pond has three parts. Blobs sit on your desktop, one per agent. The stage opens an agent's terminal in the middle of the screen. The sidebar lists your projects, their worktrees and the agents working in them.

Blobs

Each agent gets one blob. Its face and colour tell you what it is doing.

State	Meaning
Working	The agent is busy.
Needs you	A permission or question is waiting, or the agent ended its turn with a question. The blob lifts and gets an orange badge.
Idle	The turn ended and you have seen it.
Finished	The turn ended after work and you have not seen it yet.
Ended	The agent exited cleanly. The blob fades out after 3 seconds.
Error	The process died, lost its terminal, or its folder was removed. Red badge.

Hover a blob for a card with its state. Click it to open its terminal. Drag it to move it.

The stage

A click on a blob opens its terminal large in the middle of the screen. A second click adds a tile next to it. Up to four tiles share the screen. The details are in Get started.

The sidebar

The sidebar lists your projects and their worktrees, one row each, with the agents working in them. From a row you can start a new task, merge, run tests or remove a worktree. See Worktrees.

The sidebar, its menus, the sheets and the terminal and diff tiles share one set of colours, type sizes and spacing, in light and dark. When the drawer is open, the rail of icons and the list are one panel with one outline and rounded corners, not two floating ones. It slides out of the rail when it opens and back into it when it closes. With Reduce Motion on, it fades instead.

• Click the Dock icon, or press [ while Pond is active, to show or hide it.
• It docks on the left (the default) or the right.
• Cmd-K opens search. It finds agents, projects, worktrees, changed file names and commands.
• Cmd-D, Cmd-F and the other keys inside a terminal tile are on Terminal tiles.
• Cmd-N starts a new task. Cmd-, opens Settings.

Notifications

Pond sends a macOS notification when an agent needs you, when it stops with an error, or when a turn finishes and you have not seen it. The title is the agent's title and the body is one line, such as "Needs you: trust this folder" or "Finished". Click it to open that agent's terminal. Notifications are grouped by project and make no sound.

• A needs-you or error notification waits 60 seconds while the blob is on screen and not covered, in case you answer first. Pond sends it at once when Pond is hidden, the blob is covered, a full-screen app has the screen, or the display is asleep.
• A finish is sent only when you are away: Pond is hidden, the blob is covered, a full-screen app has the screen or the display is asleep. A finish that is still unsent after 10 minutes is dropped.
• Nothing is sent while that agent's terminal is open and Pond is in front.
• There is one notification per event. Pond takes it back when the agent moves on or you open its terminal.
• macOS asks for permission the first time a notification is due, not at launch. Focus modes hold them back like any other app's.
• Settings has a Notifications switch, on by default. Turn it off and Pond sends none.