The session panel

Every card is a Claude Code session. To open it, click the card, or select it and press Enter. Its panel opens on the right, beside the board. The panel holds the conversation so far, the card’s links, and a box for messages to Claude.

The board with the panel of DESK-5, “Migrate the billing exports to S3”, open on the right

Press Esc or the × to close the panel. The session keeps running.

The header

The header names the card. It shows the card’s key, its status, the account the session runs under, its title and folder, the status line, the links, and the session’s figures so far.

The panel’s header: DESK-5, Your turn, Claude · Default account, the title, ~/Work/Globex/billing, the status line, the PR #88 chip and “6 turns · 182k tokens · $1.84” — The header of a card waiting for your answer, with one pull request linked.

Claude · <account> is the Claude account the session runs under. It is the organization’s account (see Accounts). Every view of a session names it: the panel, the full window and the terminal.
The folder is where Claude works: <Org>/<folder>, shown from your home as ~/…. Claude runs there with --permission-mode auto. The organization’s own folder is added too, so its .claude/skills load.
The status line says why the card is where it is, for example “Your turn: Which bucket region should the exports use?”.
Link chips show each link with its live state. Click one to open it in your browser. Artifacts the session publishes are listed under the links, as “Artifact … · open in the browser”.
Turns, tokens and cost of the session so far. See Tokens, cost and limits.

The icons at the right end act on the card:

The header’s icons: full window, edit, terminal, archive and close

From left to right: Open full window, Edit the card (E), Open in the Claude Code terminal (T), Archive the card, and Close the panel (Esc).

The full window shows the same session over the whole window. The terminal opens it in the full Claude Code TUI.

Starting a session

A card that never had a session shows Start working. Click it and Claude starts on the card: its title, notes and links go with the first message. You can also type what to do in the box below instead.

A new card’s panel: the Start working button and its hint — A card without a session yet.

The conversation

The conversation reads top to bottom, newest last. It holds your messages, Claude’s replies and a line for every tool Claude uses.

Two tool lines: Read billing/export/writer.go, then Bash go test ./export/… with “Run the exporter’s tests before changing it” and Explain — Tool lines start with `>`. A shell command also says, in Claude’s words, what it does.

A tool line names the tool and its most telling input: the file read, the pattern searched, the command run. A shell command adds Claude’s plain description of it, and Explain has Haiku take it apart (see Shell commands). A file change shows as a diff, and a subagent’s work shows in the subagents bar.

Claude’s replies are drawn from their Markdown: headings, lists, tables, quotes, links and code with its highlighting.

A reply of Claude’s with Copy at the end of its name line — Every reply of Claude’s has Copy at the end of its name line.

Selecting and copying text

Drag over text to select it. Double-click selects a word, triple-click the whole block. Claude’s replies keep their formatting while you select. What you select in a reply is copied when you let go of the mouse.
Copy at the end of a reply’s name line copies the whole reply as Markdown.
A click on a link in a reply opens it, as long as you didn’t select anything.

Part of a reply selected, highlighted in blue — A selection in one of Claude’s replies. A selection stays inside one block.

Status lines

Claude tells desk how things stand with a line at the end of a reply. desk acts on these lines and hides them, so they never show in the conversation:

Line	What desk does
`DESK-STATUS: blocked — <reason>`	The card goes to Blocked, with the reason as its status line.
`DESK-STATUS: done`	The card goes to Done.
`DESK-LINK: <url>`	The link is attached to the card and its state checked.

You don’t write these lines yourself: Claude is told to use them. For example, after Claude opens a pull request, the reply ends with DESK-LINK: https://github.com/acme-corp/api/pull/612. The line doesn’t show, and the card gets the pull request’s chip:

The card’s links: ABC-131 and a new PR #612 · open · CI running chip — The pull request Claude linked, with its CI running.

The end of the conversation: Claude’s reply “Pushed and opened pull request #612, linked to ABC-123. CI is running.” with no DESK-LINK line — The same reply in the conversation: the `DESK-LINK` line is gone.

When a turn ends without any of these, the card is your turn.

The message box

Type in the box at the foot of the panel and press Enter or Send. Shift+Enter adds a new line. Esc leaves the box.

While Claude works, the box says Claude is working; your message goes next. A Stop button beside Send interrupts the turn.
A message that starts with ! is a shell command you run yourself. See Shell commands.
Ctrl+V with an image on the clipboard saves it beside the board and puts ![image](path) in your message. Claude reads the image.
If Claude asked you something, what you type answers it in your own words. See Questions and permissions.

Sending a message moves a card in Backlog, To do or Blocked to In progress.