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Everyday workflow

Lanes are one way to work. Underneath, Ninebrains is a full agent workbench, inherited from Emdash. Everything on this page works with or without lanes, and with agents other than Claude Code and Codex.

A task is one git worktree plus the agent conversations in it. A lane is a task with one terminal agent, shown in the grid.

Tasks and worktrees

Create a task in any of these ways:

  • the New Task button on a project in the left sidebar, or in the project’s task list;
  • New Task from a row in the project’s Pull Requests tab;
  • Mod+N, or New Task in the command palette (Mod+K).

The Create Task dialog has a task name, an optional linked issue or pull request, and two tabs:

  • Initial Conversation: the agent conversation to start with the task.
  • Workspace Settings: Create new branch or Checkout branch, and the branch to start from.

New tasks start from the project’s default branch. Change it in the project’s Settings tab, under Default branch. The app-wide branch settings are in Settings → Repository.

Switch tasks with Mod+Alt+Up and Mod+Alt+Down. Archive a task with Mod+Shift+E.

Editor

Open the Files panel (Mod+Shift+2, or Files in the task’s title bar). Files open as editor tabs in a Monaco editor. Save with Mod+S.

To open the worktree in another editor, use the Open in menu, or Mod+O.

Changes and diffs

Open the Changes panel (Mod+Shift+1, or Changes in the task’s title bar). It lists staged and unstaged files. Click a file to open its diff in a tab.

Commit and push

The commit card in the Changes panel has a Commit message box and three actions:

  • Commit
  • Commit & Push
  • Commit & Create PR

There is also a Push changes button, and Git Fetch, Git Pull and Git Push in the command palette.

Pull requests

  • Create: click Create PR in the pull request section of the Changes panel. The dialog offers a normal or draft pull request, and Push & Create PR.
  • Browse: open the project’s Pull Requests tab. Start a task from any pull request.

Pull requests need GitHub connected. See First run.

Terminals

Toggle the terminal drawer with Mod+J. It has two tabs:

  • Terminals: shells in the worktree. New terminal opens another (Mod+Shift+`).
  • Scripts: the project’s lifecycle scripts, such as the run script that starts a dev server.

Terminal settings are in Settings → Interface → Terminal.

Project scripts and .emdash.json

Each project can have lifecycle scripts: prepare, setup, run and teardown. Set them in the project’s Settings tab. Setup runs automatically in each new task; run does not, until you turn on Auto-run on task creation for it.

These settings are saved for your machine. To share scripts with your team, use the share option to write them to .emdash.json in the repository. See Configuration.

Preview browser

Ninebrains watches each task’s terminal and script output for a local URL, such as http://localhost:5173. When it finds one and the port answers, a Preview pill appears in the task’s title bar.

  • Open the in-app browser with Mod+Shift+B.
  • Copy its URL with Mod+Shift+C.
  • If your server is not detected, use Forward Port to add it by hand.

The browser does not open by itself when a server is found. Lanes use the same preview servers for the lane browser and for the screenshot gate.

MCP servers

Open Settings → MCP. Search the catalog, add a server from its card, or add your own with Custom MCP.

Servers added here are written to each agent’s own configuration, in the default config directory only. Lanes do not use them: a lane gets only the Brain’s server and its project’s pack servers. See Packs.

Skills

Open Settings → Skills. Search the catalog, then Install or Uninstall from a skill’s card or its detail dialog. Skills are stored in ~/.agentskills, where every agent that reads that folder can use them.

Skills whose names start with nb- belong to packs. Ninebrains manages them, and removes any it does not expect. Do not name your own skills nb-….

Automations

Click Automations at the bottom of the left sidebar. Create automation asks for a name, a project, a schedule and a prompt. The schedule is a standard five-field cron expression, with an optional time zone.

Each run of an automation creates a task with the prompt as its conversation. Automations are separate from the Brain and from unattended runs.

Issues

Settings → Integrations connects issue trackers: GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Jira, Asana, Trello, Notion, Plane, Plain, Monday, Forgejo and Featurebase. Once one is connected, the Create Task dialog can start a task from an issue.

Settings pages

Settings (Mod+,) has these pages, in order: General, Integrations, Interface, Browser, Repository, Prompts, System, Workspaces, Conversations, Agents, MCP, Skills, Packs, Gates, Models and Machines.