Keyboard Shortcuts

Pythinker Code CLI's TUI interactive mode supports a set of keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts are organized into five groups by usage context: general input, mode switching, during streaming, tool output control, the approval panel, and popup navigation. Type /help in the TUI at any time to open the built-in shortcut reference.

General Shortcuts

The following keys are always available in the input box:

Shortcut	Function
Enter	Submit the current input
Shift-Enter / Ctrl-J	Insert a newline in the input
↑ / ↓	Browse input history
Esc	Close a popup / cancel completion / interrupt streaming output or context compaction
Ctrl-C	Interrupt the current streaming output, or clear the input box
Ctrl-D	Exit Pythinker Code CLI when the input box is empty

Pressing Ctrl-C during streaming cancels immediately — no second confirmation needed.

Exiting the program (pressing Ctrl-C with an empty input box, or pressing Ctrl-D) uses a double-press confirmation mechanism: after the first press, a prompt appears in the status bar; a second press of the same key actually exits. Pressing any other key in between clears the confirmation state.

Mode Switching

Shortcut	Function
Shift-Tab / Ctrl-T	Cycle thinking effort for the current model

Press Shift-Tab (or Ctrl-T) to cycle the thinking effort through the levels the current model supports (for example off → low → medium → high, wrapping back to off). Models without selectable effort levels show a notice instead.

Plan mode is toggled with the /plan command (/plan, /plan on, /plan off). When enabled, the Agent prioritizes read-only tools for research and planning and can write to the current plan file; Bash is subject to the current permission mode and regular rules, without any additional separate approval triggered by Plan mode. Simply toggling does not create an empty plan file.

Input & Editing

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl-G	Edit the current input in an external editor
Ctrl-V	Paste an image or video from the clipboard (Unix / macOS)
Alt-V	Paste an image or video from the clipboard (Windows)
Ctrl--	Undo

Pressing Ctrl-G opens an external editor, selected according to the following priority:

1. The editor configured via the /editor command
2. The $VISUAL environment variable
3. The $EDITOR environment variable

After saving and exiting, the edited content replaces the input box; exiting without saving leaves the input unchanged.

When pasting an image or video, a placeholder is shown in the input box — the actual media data is sent to the model when the message is submitted. The system clipboard is read first; on Linux, Wayland and X11 are tried; on WSL, PowerShell is also used as a fallback to read the Windows clipboard.

During Streaming

While streaming output is active, the input box can still receive input and supports the following additional operations:

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl-S	Steer: inject the current input directly into the running turn
Esc	Interrupt the current streaming output
Ctrl-C	Interrupt the current streaming output

Pressing Ctrl-S causes the model to see your message at the next interruptible point, without waiting for the current turn to finish.

Tool Output

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl-O	Expand or collapse tool output

When collapsed tool call results exist in the history, press Ctrl-O to toggle between collapsed and expanded views.

Approval Panel

When the Agent initiates a tool call that requires confirmation, the TUI displays an approval panel. For the full approval workflow, see Interaction & Input. The available keys inside the panel are:

Shortcut	Function
↑ / ↓	Move the cursor between candidate options
Enter	Confirm the currently selected option
1 ~ 9	Directly select the option at the corresponding index
Esc / Ctrl-C / Ctrl-D	Reject the current request
Ctrl-E	Expand or collapse the full content when the panel contains a diff or file preview
Ctrl-O	Toggle the collapsed state of other tool output

Options that require feedback (such as "Reject" or "Revise") switch to a feedback input state after confirmation: type the feedback text and press Enter to submit; press Esc to exit feedback input and return to the candidate list.

Popup Mode

After opening the help panel with /help, use the following keys to navigate and close it:

Shortcut	Function
↑ / ↓	Scroll one line at a time
PageUp / PageDown	Scroll 10 lines at a time
Esc / Enter / q / Q	Close the panel

Next steps

• Slash Commands — Quick reference for built-in TUI control commands
• pythinker Command — Complete reference for startup flags and subcommands