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Using bro

Press F1 inside bro to see every key binding. You need at least one agent installed (Claude Code, Codex, Pi or omp); bro launches the ones it finds, and bro install agents installs them.

Profiles

Choose Manage profiles in the new-session picker, or press Alt+O, to add Claude or Codex profiles. Choose + Claude or + Codex, enter a name, then Create + log in. Bro opens that profile's login tab; in Claude, run /login. Select a profile and choose Remove to delete its local login, settings and saved sessions after confirmation. Bro protects the machine's default logins (claude:local and codex:local) from removal.

Session menu and reload

Right-click a session's title bar, or press Ctrl+Space, to open the session menu in the desktop app or terminal UI. Click an action, press its key, or use Up/Down and Enter. Esc closes the menu. The menu follows your custom prefix and key bindings; Ctrl+Space twice still sends it to the agent.

In the desktop app, right-click terminal content for Copy and Paste. Programs that handle mouse input keep their right-clicks; hold Shift while right-clicking to open Bro's clipboard menu instead.

Choose Reload session with a profile, or press Ctrl+Space, then Shift+R. Pick the current profile to load its latest settings, or choose another profile to continue the conversation there. Reload keeps the pane's position and your session name. If Bro cannot find the transcript or build the new command, the current session stays open.

Alt+R still opens earlier sessions; its prefix shortcut is now Ctrl+Space C. Use Ctrl+Space k/j to focus the pane above/below; Up/Down select menu actions.

Pasting images

Alt+V pastes a clipboard image into the focused agent as a file path. On Windows, Bro uses the original clipboard PNG when available; this avoids blank images from a browser's bitmap copy. Clipboard contents stay unchanged.

Fonts

Settings → Appearance → Font switches the terminal font live: bro bundles JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, IBM Plex Mono, Maple Mono, Victor Mono, Monaspace Krypton and Radon, Space Mono, Share Tech Mono, Comic Mono, Departure Mono and VT323, video-game-era Kode Mono, Doto, Monocraft (Minecraft), IBM VGA 8x16 (DOS), Workbench (Amiga), Sixtyfour (C64) and Press Start 2P, plus the Nerd Font symbols for its icons — all open source, licences in crates/bro-tui/assets/fonts/licenses.

Themes

Settings → Appearance → Theme, or theme in the palette, shows each theme live as you move through the list. Next to bro's own (graphite, paper, nebula, and the skinned outrun, vaporwave, cyber, blueprint, phosphor and digital-rain), bro carries the most-installed VS Code themes, taken from their published theme files: the editor background, the side bar, the cursor and all sixteen terminal colours. A few accents are nudged where text on them would be hard to read.

  • Dark: GitHub Dark and Dark Dimmed, One Dark Pro, Dracula, Monokai Pro, Night Owl, VS Code's Dark Modern, Ayu Dark and Mirage, Palenight, Tokyo Night and Storm, Catppuccin Mocha, Macchiato and Frappé, Rosé Pine, Kanagawa, Gruvbox, Nord, Everforest, Solarized Dark, Poimandres, Vitesse Dark, Noctis, Aura and Andromeda (with stars).
  • Loud: SynthWave '84 (its neon glows in the desktop app), Shades of Purple, Cobalt2 and Panda.
  • Light: GitHub Light, Atom One Light, Night Owl Light, Ayu Light, Solarized Light, Catppuccin Latte and Rosé Pine Dawn.

Make your own in ~/.bro/themes/<name>.toml: start from any of them (base = "dracula") and list only what you change. bro picks up each save as you make it.

Everything it does

  • Runs your agents in panes — split, zoom, and switch between live sessions, grouped by project.
  • Shows who needs you — each agent is marked working, blocked, done or idle.
  • Switches accounts — multiple Claude and Codex profiles, with usage meters for each.
  • Resumes anything — pick up a past session, or fork it into another profile.
  • Mixes models — a built-in proxy lets Claude Code run on OpenAI-format models, and Codex / Pi / omp run on Claude.
  • Reaches your phone — a built-in bridge lets the Just Terminal mobile and web clients connect.
  • Sets how Claude Code runs — pick a preset (Quiet, Private, Lockdown, Incognito, Presenter, Marathon) in Settings (the ⚙ in the sidebar, alt+, or prefix A), next to theme, icons, auto-resume, recaps and compression, to control telemetry, updates, retries and more for every launch. See docs/claude-env.md.
  • Keeps projects apart — Claude sessions only find and message sessions in their own project and the orchestrator. Claude Code on its own lets any session reach any other. Change it under Settings › Claude Code › Messages between sessions. See docs/claude-env.md.
  • The orchestrator — one session that runs the others. Start it from New session (the gold ★ orchestrator tab, or alt+O) on Claude Code, Codex, Pi or omp. It opens sessions, hands them tasks, waits on them and reports back. Push-to-talk, the phone and web orchestrator panels, watchdog reviews and the reminders it schedules for itself (once, every so often or daily, for this session or across restarts) all go to it. It sits in gold at the top of the sidebar, runs in ~/orchestrator, and comes back with the same settings when you reopen bro. bro ctl <tool> gives any shell the same tools.
  • Agent teams — on for every Claude session: ask Claude for teammates and watch them work. Each lead lists its teammates in the sidebar (working or idle, what each is doing, tasks done), and ctrl+space M opens the team board with the shared task list. Switch them off or pick the teammates' model under Settings → Claude Code → agent teams. See docs/claude-env.md.
  • Watchdogs — keep a session working while you're away. Press ctrl+space w on a session and list its milestones. Each time the agent stops and sits idle, bro hands the review to the orchestrator, starting one if none is running. It reads the chat and the code, checks the work against the milestones and sends the agent its next task. It can clear the agent's context before a new milestone, or open a second-opinion session (an Opus pass over UI work Codex did, for example). Edit what every reviewer is told under Settings → watchdog. See docs/watchdog.md.
  • The desktop app — bro gui opens the same workspace in its own window: terminals drawn on the GPU, every row, tab and button clickable, and the pictures and videos your agents make, open or send you shown in a panel beside your sessions instead of another app. See docs/gui.md.
  • Claude Code in your theme — new Claude sessions wear your bro theme, every colour, and recolour live when you switch or preview themes. The bro mod (off by default) adds limits to Claude's hint line, /bro for your sessions and limits, and tools for Claude to show you files and ping your phone. Both in Settings › Claude Code. See docs/claude-mod.md.
  • Caveman mode — terse replies that keep every technical fact (Caveman rules: caveman, ultracave or megacave) for new Claude, Codex and Pi sessions. Turn it on in Settings or the palette ("caveman"); ⛏ in the sidebar and on each session's header shows it. Nothing to install. See docs/caveman.md.
  • Sounds — PeonPing voice lines when a session starts, finishes, fails or needs you, in Claude Code, Codex, Pi and omp. Settings › Integrations › Sounds (or "sounds" in the palette): pick a pack, preview and install from the registry, choose which moments speak. Shares peon-ping's config and packs when it's installed. See docs/sounds.md.