Settings reference
What each of the fourteen settings sections does — from shells and GPU rendering to budgets, voice, SSH hosts, Labs and diagnostics.
Open Settings with Ctrl+,, from More in the title bar or the account menu. Every section is also in the command palette — type “settings” and the section name. Close Settings with Esc or the back arrow.
General
| Group | Setting |
|---|---|
| Terminal | Shell for new terminals — PowerShell 7, Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt or Git Bash. Open terminals keep theirs. Without Git Bash, a note tells you to install Git for Windows |
| Confirm before closing running agents — asks before a pane with a working agent is closed | |
| Performance | How instant starts work, and GPU rendering for terminals — WebGL for the focused terminal and terminals with a lot of output; quiet panes stay on the lighter renderer |
| Energy | Keep the computer awake while agents work — prevents standby; the screen may turn off. Overnight runs always keep the system awake |
| Keyboard | The most important shortcuts — see Keyboard shortcuts |
Appearance
- Mode: Dark, Light or System.
- Light terminal in light themes — off by default, because CLI graphics expect a dark background.
- Terminal text size — 11 to 18 px, for all panes.
- Dark themes and Light themes as preview cards. Graphite Dark, Graphite Light and Midnight are PaneScale’s own; with the Theme Pack you also get Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, Dracula, GitHub, Nord and Solarized.
Themes are checked for contrast — body text at least 7:1, secondary text 4.5:1, accents and status colours 3:1. Where a palette needed it, only its brightness was adjusted, never its hue; such themes are marked adjusted. Origin of the colours credits the public colour schemes.
Agents & accounts
- Coding CLIs — every supported CLI with version and status, install commands for missing ones, Check again.
- Start options for agent terminals — effort and bypass. See Accounts → Start options.
- Accounts — profiles for Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI. See Accounts → Profiles.
- Model APIs (workflows) — Ollama and your own endpoint. See Accounts → Model APIs.
Skills
Reusable instructions — code conventions, review checklists, release steps. Add skill with a name and the content. Skills are given to agents as context, never as commands, so a skill can inform an agent but can’t override your rules.
Plugins
Sign-in status for service CLIs — GitHub (gh), Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare (wrangler), Supabase, Stripe, Fly.io, Railway, Docker and Google Cloud. Check shows Signed in, Not signed in with the sign-in command, or Not installed. PaneScale only checks; credentials stay with each CLI.
MCP bridge
Turn the bridge on or off, show, copy or regenerate its token, copy the client configuration, and manage your MCP connections.
Usage & Guardian
Measured usage today and this month, cost, unreported runs, usage per engine and per kind of run, budgets, runaway rules and fired alerts. See Token Guardian. Subscription limits are on their own page — see Usage & limits.
Notifications
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sound effects | A short sound for approval requests and finished work. Test sound plays it once |
| Desktop notifications | Windows notifications, only while the PaneScale window isn’t visible; at most three in three seconds |
| Bring approvals forward | Brings PaneScale to the front when a risky step needs your consent |
| Send test notification | Shows what a waiting agent looks like. If nothing appears, allow PaneScale in Windows Settings → System → Notifications and check Do not disturb |
Turning off desktop notifications also turns off the 90 % usage alerts.
Voice & dictation
Install whisper.cpp, download Whisper Base or Turbo, choose the active model, delete models you don’t need, and pick the language: automatic, German, English, Arabic, French or Spanish. The section also lists all voice commands. See Voice.
Remote SSH
Work on another computer: keep a list of SSH hosts and open terminal panes on them.
- Add host — a display name, the target (
user@hostor an alias from your~/.ssh/config), an optional port and an optional key file. - Check — tests the connection: Connected, Host key unknown, Sign-in refused, Not reachable or OpenSSH missing.
- Terminal — opens a pane named SSH · <host> in the active project and connects.
PaneScale only connects to hosts whose key is already known. If the check says Host key unknown, run ssh <host> once in a normal terminal and verify the fingerprint.
Storage
Worktrees left over from lanes and autopilot runs, with their size and whether they still belong to a run. Open lanes are never offered for deletion. Select the ones you no longer need, Remove selected, or Rescan. Below, Further data lists PaneScale’s other data with its size.
Labs
Switch individual features on or off. Everything is on by default.
| Feature | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Point & Fix | Click an element in the browser and say what should change |
| Token Guardian | Measured usage, budgets that stop runs, loop detection |
| Overnight Autopilot | The unattended queue with a morning report |
| Undo for agents | A checkpoint before every agent step that may change the workspace |
| Voice | Dictation and spoken commands |
| Terminal grid up to 30 | Layouts above six panes |
| Theme Pack | Additional colour themes with matching terminal colours |
| Live Board | A task board that follows real runs |
| Limit handoff | Handing work to another agent when one reaches its limit |
| Video Studio | The Video mode |
Account
Your PaneScale account and plan. Your AI providers are not part of this account — PaneScale uses each CLI’s own sign-in, and provider usage is billed by the provider.
Updates & support
| Group | Content |
|---|---|
| Version & updates | The installed version, Up to date or Update ready, Check, and for a ready update its version, build date, size, release notes and Update now. The update folder with Open |
| About this build | What’s new in this build, and the data folder with Copy |
| Support | Export diagnostics as JSON — build, database integrity, engine and feature counters, without conversations and with secrets removed. Developer tools to inspect the window |
| Licenses | The open-source components PaneScale is built on |