Scratchpad

  • Desktop app
  • All plans
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What it does

A proper place to write a long, structured prompt before it reaches an agent. Terminals are poor editors: no comfortable rereading, a blank line can fire the command early, and the text is gone when the window closes. The Scratchpad gives you a real text area with automatic save, then sends the whole block to the agent as one atomic paste, so paragraphs, blank lines, tabs and special characters arrive exactly as written and nothing runs too early.

Today the Scratchpad lives inside the composer of every agent: the compact bar under the terminal and its expanded Compose overlay. The former footer button was folded into the composer; every capability it had (draft that survives restarts, dictation, save as prompt, one-shot send) is now one click away in the composer itself.

Where to find it

  • Under every agent terminal: the composer bar ("Give your agent a prompt or a task"). Click Expand to open the near-fullscreen Compose overlay.
  • Composer toolbar buttons: Dictate, Prompts (open the prompt library), Save (save this draft as a new prompt in the library), Sketch, Screenshot, Clear, Send.

How to use it

  1. Type in the composer. Enter sends, Shift+Enter inserts a new line. In the expanded Compose overlay, Enter inserts a new line and Cmd/Ctrl+Enter sends.
  2. Your draft is saved automatically per agent: switch project, close the window, relaunch the app, the text is still there.
  3. Reread, fix, then Send: the draft goes to the agent as a single paste. The agent receives it exactly as written.
  4. A prompt worth keeping: click Save to store it in the project's Prompt Library, or Prompts to insert an existing one without losing your draft.
  5. Hands busy: Dictate transcribes your voice at the cursor (see Voice Dictation).

Settings

  • composerDefaultHeight (global, Settings > Composer): maximum height of the compact composer, in pixels.
  • composerFontSize (global, Settings > Composer): composer font size.
  • composerHiddenActions (global, Settings > Composer > Composer toolbar buttons): hide the toolbar buttons you do not use.
  • composerInputHidden (global, Settings > Composer > Hide input box): remove the composer bar entirely and type in the CLI prompt instead.

Agent tools (MCP)

None. Drafts are yours until you send them; agents never read the composer.

Providers

All providers, no difference: the draft is pasted into whichever CLI runs in the terminal, using the terminal's bracketed paste so multi-line text is treated as one block.

Mobile

Not as such. The mobile companion has its own message composer for the focused desktop agent, with dictation and attachments; it does not share the desktop draft.

Limits

  • Drafts are stored locally on the machine, not synced: a prompt meant for another machine or a teammate goes through Save into the Prompt Library.
  • One draft per agent; there is no list of past drafts.
  • The composer targets the agent whose terminal it belongs to; there is no separate picker.

Common questions

  • Where did the footer Scratchpad button go? Its features moved into the composer: Expand for the large editor, Save for "save as prompt", Prompts for the library, Dictate for voice.
  • Will my prompt arrive complete, with blank lines? Yes: it is sent as one paste, so nothing executes early and nothing is swallowed.
  • Does sending clear the draft? Yes, the composer empties once the message is written to the agent. Save it as a prompt first if you want to reuse it.
  • Is the draft in the cloud? No, it stays on your machine.

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