Search and shortcuts

What it's for

With three projects and half a dozen terminals open, reaching for everything with the mouse gets tiring. The command palette (Ctrl+K) finds a command or a terminal by name. Search (Ctrl+Shift+F) looks inside the text: in terminal output, in stages and in rules. Keyboard shortcuts cover the rest, such as switching terminals, enlarging a pane or adding a pane to the broadcast. You can work most of the day without taking your hands off the keyboard.

When to use it and when not to

Use the palette when you know what you want to do and don't remember where it is: "Routines", "Sent instructions", "Project verification…". Use search when you remember a piece of text and don't know where it showed up: the name of a file an agent mentioned, an error message, a word from a rule.

Search does not look inside the project's files. It looks at what is in PrumoGrid's terminals, stages and rules. To search the code, use the terminal (git grep, for example) or ask an agent.

Step by step

Run a command from the palette

1. Press Ctrl+K, or open Tools → Command palette….
2. Start typing the command name, for example rot. The list filters and shows Routines, with the Ctrl+Shift+U shortcut next to it.
3. Use the arrow keys to choose and Enter to run. Esc closes the palette.

The palette gathers the most-used destinations:

• Under Go to, Grid, Focus and Flow. Grid and Focus put the keyboard in the terminal, ready to type.
• Each open terminal, with its state, active or closed.
• Switch to a project, such as Switch to portal-web.
• New stage, Routines, Sent instructions, Attention and Notifications.
• With a project selected, Project verification… opens its verification.
• Shortcuts, with the list of keys.

If no command matches what you typed, the palette shows the Search content button, which opens search with the text you already typed.

Find text in terminals, stages and rules

The example looks for where the PRIMEIRA coupon showed up in loja-api.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+F or click the find a terminal, a stage or a rule… field at the top of the window.
2. Type cupom. Search starts at two letters.
3. Read the results, grouped by source. In the example, the Claude Code terminal has 2 matches, each with its line number (L12, L15) and the excerpt.
4. Click a match to go to it.
5. Press Esc to close search. Focus returns to where you were.

In Focus, Ctrl+F runs a different search: only inside the conversation of the terminal in the spotlight.

Search inside a conversation, in Focus

1. Click Focus and bring the terminal to the center.
2. Press Ctrl+F or click the Search this conversation field at the top of the terminal.
3. Type the text, for example subtotal. The matches are marked in the terminal and the counter shows 1 of 3.
4. Press Enter for the next one and Shift+Enter for the previous one, or use the arrows next to the field.
5. Press Esc or the × to clear the search. The keyboard goes back to the terminal.

To get back to one of your instructions, rather than any piece of the answer, use the Prompt guide, next to the same field.

What you can search for

Search (Ctrl+Shift+F) looks at three sources at once and shows each one in its own group:

Clicking a result takes you to it:

• Terminal: switches to the terminal's project if needed, focuses the terminal, scrolls to the line and selects the excerpt.
• Stage: opens the Stages tab and shows the terminal the stage runs in.
• Rule: switches to the rule's project if needed and opens the rule in Rules and roles.

The groups do not search the same way. In terminals, search finds the text exactly as typed, ignoring case but not accents. In stages and rules, every word has to appear, in any order, and accents do not count: coupon primeira finds the stage "Fix the PRIMEIRA coupon", and brazilian portuguese finds the rule "Always answer in Brazilian Portuguese".

What you see on screen

Enlarge screenshot ↗

Enlarge screenshot ↗

All shortcuts

This is the list from Tools → Keyboard shortcuts… in version 0.5.11. Inside a text field, PrumoGrid does not hijack keys: what you type belongs to the field.

Enlarge screenshot ↗

Esc and where focus goes back

Esc closes the surface on top: search, the palette, a dialog. A few rules help you keep your place:

• Closing a surface gives focus back to where it was, usually the terminal you were typing in.
• After you click a dialog's header, Esc still closes that dialog.
• With no terminal on screen, closing with Esc gives focus back to the Tools button.
• When focus returns to a terminal that was out of view, the Grid scrolls to it.

Clicking the sidebar tabs, or Grid and Focus in the bar, also does not take focus away from the terminal you were typing in.

Tips

• Alt opens Tools, and the underlined letters in the items work as shortcuts inside the menu.
• Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 follow the order of the selected project's terminals. Arrange the order with Ctrl+Shift+← and Ctrl+Shift+→ so the main agent is always number 1.
• Ctrl+C with no selection sends the interrupt to the process, as in any terminal. To copy safely, select first or use Ctrl+Shift+C.
• To paste an image into an agent, copy the screenshot and use Ctrl+V in the terminal; Ctrl+Shift+V inserts the path of a saved file. See Terminals and shells.
• Searching instructions you already sent is done in Sent instructions (Ctrl+Shift+I), which has its own field. See History and writing.

Known limitations

• Search needs at least two letters and does not look in the project's files.
• Search in terminals looks at the text still in each terminal's scrollback. What has left the scrollback does not show up.
• Search shows up to 200 results: up to 40 matches per terminal, with 80 places reserved for stages and rules. If the term is common, add another word.
• In Focus, the conversation search warns you when it passes 2,000 matches and asks you to refine the term.
• In text fields, the field's own editing and navigation keys take priority over the shortcuts.