Customizing Mel
Settings, tab configs, and the pieces you can shape to your workflow.
Mel keeps customization in a few well-defined places: the Settings window for app-wide behavior, tab configs for reproducible workspaces, and Drive for the things you reuse. A rule Mel holds itself to: every switch in Settings is real — if a toggle exists, the behavior behind it is wired.
The Settings window
Open Settings from the avatar menu in the top-right of the titlebar, or press Ctrl+, (⌘, on a Mac). It's a full-window view with a searchable left nav. Some pages stand on their own; others sit in three folding groups, Agents, Code and Cloud platform. The groups start folded, the group that holds the open page opens by itself, and typing in the search box opens every group with a match. The pages:
| Page | What lives there |
|---|---|
| Account | Sign-in, plan and account details |
| Profile | Your name, display name and time zone |
| Security | Your password, the devices signed in, and recent sign-ins |
| Agents ▸ AI | Shell-command autodetect, input hints, AI command suggestions, thoughts, voice input, default models and Auto mode, provider API keys |
| Agents ▸ Agent mode | What the agent may do without asking, the command allowlist and denylist, base models — see Tools & approvals |
| Agents ▸ Connectors | Partner tools on your own key — see Connectors |
| Agents ▸ Library | Skills, saved prompts and MCP servers — see Library |
| Agents ▸ Knowledge | Your rules, MEL.md instructions, and what is pinned for this project — see Rules and MEL.md |
| Agents ▸ Third party CLI agents | The toolbar and Rich Input for Claude Code, Codex and other CLI agents (v0.1.62) |
| Billing and Usage | Plan, credits, add-on packs and usage history |
| Code ▸ Indexing and projects | A map of each folder's files and symbols, on this computer only; off by default (v0.1.62) |
| Code ▸ Editor and Code Review | Line numbers, opening the review panel, the explorer and file search, hidden files, auto save (v0.1.62) |
| Cloud platform ▸ API keys | Create and revoke your Mel API keys — see Mel API keys |
| Team | Start a Business team, its seats and its members |
| Appearance | Eight themes (one for dark, one for light), zoom, font size, the text cursor, block dividers, pane dimming, focus follows mouse |
| Features | Session block cap, restoring tabs and panes, warn before quitting, right-click paste, notifications, beta updates |
| Keyboard shortcuts | A searchable table where you can change any key — see keyboard shortcuts |
| Melt | Which commands open full screen, and SSH melting |
| Referrals | An invite link to share |
| Privacy | What stays on this machine, crash reports, conversation sync |
| About | Version info |
Everything is backed by one file — ~/.mel/settings.json — and the nav footer's Open settings file takes you straight to it if you'd rather edit JSON. Changes apply immediately. The search box at the top of the nav finds a page by name, and every on/off setting can also be toggled from the command palette.
Tab configs: reproducible workspaces
A tab config is a small .toml file in ~/.mel/tab_configs/ describing a tab: its name, color, and a pane layout — including splits, a working directory per pane, and a startup command per pane. The + button in the titlebar lists your configs; picking one opens a fully set-up tab. Configs can declare parameters (free text, or repo and branch pickers) that Mel prompts for when the tab opens and substitutes into paths and commands as {{name}}.
Right-click a config in the + menu to make it the default — after that, plain Ctrl+Shift+T (⌘T on a Mac) opens your configured workspace instead of a bare tab. "New Tab Config" writes a stub file and opens it in the editor so you can start from a working skeleton.
The sidebar itself is adjustable too: the sliders icon in the tab rail sets density (compact or expanded), what the primary row shows, the subtitle, and hover details.
Drive: your reusable library
Drive (in the tools panel, Ctrl+Shift+\ (⌃\ on a Mac)) is a personal library persisted on disk:
- Workflows — saved commands with
{argument}placeholders; clicking one inserts it into the prompt with the first argument pre-selected and opens its card above the input. - Prompts — reusable agent prompts, inserted as your query.
- Notebooks — markdown notes with a
/block menu and an Editing / Viewing switch. - Environment variables — named sets with masked values that can resolve from a command or a secrets manager, exported into the active pane on load.
On a Business team, Drive also shows your team's shared items above your own. Items you move to the Drive's Trash wait there until you restore them or delete them for good. See Mel Drive.
Teach the agent your project
Project instructions (MEL.md, and the AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md other agents use), your rules, and pinned files shape every answer — see Rules and MEL.md. Skills, saved prompts and MCP servers live in the Library.
Feature info cards
Every icon-only control in Mel explains itself: rest the pointer on it for a moment and a small card appears with what the control does, what it's great for, and its shortcut. If you're ever unsure what a button is, hover it — and for anything else, the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P, or ⌃P on a Mac) is the searchable index of Mel's main actions, its on/off settings, and your conversations, Drive items and project files.