Panel Layout

Loxel’s workspace is divided into five fixed zones. Within those zones, panels are free-form: you can move them between groups, split areas horizontally or vertically, and resize everything. The layout for each worktree is saved automatically and restored when you switch back.

The five zones

Left sidebar

The left sidebar holds dockable panels for navigating your project:

• Project files — the file tree for the active worktree
• Changes — staged, unstaged, and untracked files; becomes a commit diff viewer when a commit is selected in the git graph
• Branches — branch list with upstream tracking, create/rename/delete/checkout
• Comments — code review sessions and comment threads
• Projects — all projects registered with loxel
• Worktrees — worktrees for the active project with dirty status indicators

Toggle any of these panels without touching the mouse:

Center

The center area is the main content area. Every editor and interactive view opens here by default:

• Diff viewer — side-by-side or unified diff for commits and working tree changes
• Code editor — Monaco-based editor with LSP, format on save, and autosave
• Markdown editor — live preview markdown editing for repo files and drafts
• Excalidraw — whiteboard and diagram editor
• Coding agent — the built-in agent’s timeline UI
• Standalone terminals — full-featured terminal tabs

Right sidebar

The right sidebar accepts any dockable panel. Use it to keep a secondary view alongside your main editor — for example, a terminal or the changes panel while reviewing code.

Bottom

The bottom zone holds views that benefit from a full-width horizontal strip:

• Git graph — the interactive commit DAG with branch and tag labels
• Terminal container — tabbed terminal sessions (T for a new tab)
• Server logs — the loxel server’s NDJSON log stream

Status bar

The status bar runs across the bottom edge of the window and is always visible. It shows:

• Active branch — the current branch name for the active worktree
• Upstream tracking — ↑ X ↓ Y (commits ahead / behind the upstream)
• Working tree counts — staged, modified, and untracked file counts
• Terminal launcher — click to open a new terminal tab

Rearranging panels

Grab any panel tab and drag it to:

• A different group to move it there
• The edge of an existing group to split that group horizontally or vertically
• A zone boundary to move it between zones

You can also split the current panel from the keyboard:

Keyboard panel navigation

Move focus between panels without the mouse.

Focus a specific panel by position:

1 through 9 focus the panels in the order they appear across the layout. The numbering follows left-to-right, top-to-bottom group order.

Cycle through open panels:

• Tab — next panel
• Tab — previous panel

Move a panel to an adjacent group:

Ctrl+Cmd+Arrow moves the active panel into the neighboring group in the arrow direction.

Move a panel into a new split:

Ctrl+Cmd+Shift+Arrow splits the current group in the arrow direction and moves the active panel into the new split.

Move focus without moving the panel:

Ctrl+Shift+Arrow moves keyboard focus to the panel group in the arrow direction, leaving the panel itself in place.

Per-context persistence

Every aspect of the layout — panel positions, group splits, sizes, orientations, and the active panel in each group — is saved per worktree context. When you switch to a different worktree, loxel saves the current layout and restores the layout from the last time you were in the destination worktree.

Layout state is stored server-side in SQLite, not in the browser. This means it survives window closes and is consistent across windows pointing at the same loxel server. See the Worktrees & Projects page for details on how context state is keyed and restored.

Error boundaries

Every panel has its own error boundary. If a panel’s component throws a render error, that panel displays an inline error fallback — a message and a reload button. The rest of the layout continues to work normally. A crash in the diff viewer does not affect your terminal or the file tree.