The console

Once a workspace is Running you spend the rest of your time in the console: a terminal-first window into the machines, with an AI/Chat side panel and a top bar of share/view controls. Workspace and interview consoles share the layout but differ in the side panels.

The console is what you see after clicking Console on a Running workspace card, or after a candidate joins a live interview. It replaces the dashboard chrome with a three-pane layout designed for one job: get out of your way while you work in the terminal.

Layout at a glance#

dashboard.easyenv.io/console/acme-engineering/workspace/<workspace-uuid>

Boxes+

Ppython-dev

Ppostgres

Rredis

2 online

Ereview-pr-1284

ThemeShare

python-dev · /workspace

you@dev:~$ uv run pytest -k test_replication
== test session starts ==
collected 4 items
tests/test_replication.py::test_lag PASSED
tests/test_replication.py::test_failover PASSED
you@dev:~$ psql -h postgres -U app -c "SELECT pg_is_in_recovery();"

AIChat

# AI · suggested next step

Replica is up. Want me to seed the test rows and rerun the lag check across both nodes?

Yes, seed and rerun

Three-pane console: boxes left, terminal center, AI/Chat right. Top bar holds the workspace title plus theme/share/view-mode controls.

Top bar#

The slim top bar shows the workspace title, your current account avatar, and a small set of session controls:

Theme: switch the terminal palette via the theme settings modal.
View mode: default, focus (hide both side panels), or maximize (full-screen terminal). Useful for screen-sharing.
Invite / Share: copy a one-time invite link or pin a teammate to the session.
Session timer: when a duration is set, a remaining-time chip surfaces here and warns at the 10/2-minute marks.

Left rail - boxes#

The left rail lists every machine ("box") in the workspace. Click one to swap the center pane to that machine's terminal. Each row shows:

The recipe icon and the machine name.
A status dot: running, starting up, failed.
A + button at the top to add another machine mid-session. Re-opens the same Add a Machine modal as the create flow.

Below the box list sits an "online users" strip with overlapping avatars of every member currently in the console. Click an avatar to follow that person's view (the "pilot" workflow).

Center pane - terminals#

The center pane is one xterm.js terminal per machine, rendered as overlapping layers. Switching machines on the left swaps which layer is on top - the others stay mounted, so the SSH connection lives on and your scrollback is preserved when you come back. The terminal supports multiple shells per machine (open extra tabs from the box header), color themes, copy/paste, and full mouse-mode programs (vim, htop, k9s).

Port view buttons

Recipes that declare ports (web UIs on 3000, 8080, etc.) get a small button in the terminal top bar that opens the port through a temporary HTTPS URL. The VS Code stack surfaces this way too - click the VS Code port view to open code-server in a new tab.

Right pane - AI / Chat#

The right pane has two tabs:

AI: a per-machine, per-conversation AI assistant. It can read the visible terminal output and propose commands, which you can run with one click. Conversations are kept per box so jumping between machines does not lose context.
Chat: live chat with everyone else in the console. Unread badges and typing indicators show in the tab. Useful for "running this now, watch the logs" moments during pair-debugging.

Workspace vs interview console#

Both consoles share the layout above. The differences sit in the side panels and the top-bar controls. Pick the page that matches what you are running:

Workspace console - regular dev environment. AI and Chat on the right; whiteboard and drawing-mode toggles in the top bar; no candidate roster.
Interview console - live interview. Adds the Jitsi video tile, a question panel for the candidate, hand-raise + emoji reactions, a candidate roster, and an End interview button.