Dialog controls and appearance

Most Vera dialogs use arrow keys to choose, Enter to open or confirm, and Escape to return or close. The footer shows the action for the focused control. Typing in a searchable picker moves into its search field.

A brief overlay can appear as a full-width band at the top of the screen, including above an open dialog, for work such as a catalog refresh. The message types on quickly, then a tick or a failure mark. Press Escape to close it when no dialog is open. While a dialog is open, Escape still belongs to the dialog and the overlay clears after a few seconds. Clicking it also closes it. Another overlay waits its turn. It does not change the dialog’s size.

Read conversation activity

Completed web searches show a count and a short query for each search in the collapsed group. Ctrl+T shows or hides the full tool calls and results. Reasoning summary rows show the time spent on that phase. Ctrl+O shows or hides the readable reasoning text returned by the provider.

Open common dialogs

Rewind previews the change before confirmation. It changes conversation history, not workspace files or external effects. Enter confirms; Escape returns to the previous screen.

Read an inspection report

/diagnostics, /doctor, and /context open reports. In /diagnostics, choose Session for the conversation or Vera for the host. Escape from a report returns to that menu.

Drag to copy a section, or press Enter to copy the complete Markdown report. Escape closes a standalone report without adding it to the transcript. Tab, Left/Right, and Space have no action inside these reports.

On a diagnostics report, V checks whether a library model can answer. It makes no such check until you request it. See Troubleshooting.

Change dialog appearance

Add appearance settings to the home’s config.json and relaunch the TUI:

{
    "tui": {
        "dialogs": {
            "header_style": "box",
            "search_style": "border"
        }
    }
}

Title style

Search-field style

Removing either setting restores its default. Search styles preserve normal typing, selection, cursor movement, and paste behavior.

Dialogs and background work

Global dialogs dim the screen, including the sidebar. A question or approval from the current conversation leaves the sidebar visible for context.