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Input & prompt

The prompt bar: typing commands, ghost autocomplete, and the slash menu.

The prompt bar at the bottom of every pane is where terminal commands, agent conversations, and Mel's built-in commands all start. It's a single input: type a shell command and press enter to run it, or press Ctrl+Enter (⌘Enter on macOS) to open an agent conversation carrying whatever you've typed. New tabs and splits start in the agent by default (Esc drops to the terminal); turn off Settings → Features → Open new sessions in the Mel agent to start them in the shell.

Anatomy

From top to bottom, the prompt area shows:

  • The chip bar — runtime, directory, and git context pills.
  • The input itself, with ghost autocomplete rendered after your text.
  • A hint row — ctrl-↵ hand this to the agent (with ⌘ on a Mac), and ctrl-shift-Y continue your last conversation beside it once there is a conversation to continue. After a failed command the row instead offers ctrl-↑ attach "<command>" output as agent context.
  • A microphone for dictation — see Voice input.

Pressing Ctrl+↑ (⌃↑ on a Mac) attaches the last finished block — command plus output — into the prompt as agent context, ready to send.

The /COMMANDS slash menu

Type / at the start of the input and a command menu opens above the prompt. Keep typing to filter, use up/down to navigate, enter to run, esc to clear. The registry:

CommandWhat it does
/melStart a new agent conversation (same as Ctrl+Enter)
/orchestrate-agentLead a team of Mel agents to build something
/orchestrate-cliLead a team of CLI agents (Claude Code, Codex) to build
/conversationsBrowse your past conversations
/compactSummarize earlier turns to free up context (optionally /compact <what to keep>)
/planHave the agent research the task and propose a plan before changing anything — see Planning
/promptsBrowse and reuse your saved prompts
/modelSwitch the model for this conversation
/open-fileOpen any project file in Mel's editor
/explorerBrowse the project file tree
/pinPin a file or a note so the agent sees it on every turn in this project
/pinsList what is pinned for this project (/unpin removes one)

Your saved prompts from the Library appear in the same menu as /their-name; Mel asks for anything a prompt needs before it runs. A few commands work when typed but are not listed: /always-ask (turn approvals back on in this conversation), /unpin, and the account words /signin, /signout and /whoami.

The menu only appears when the text after / matches a command — absolute paths like /usr/bin/ls still run as ordinary commands.

Drag and drop file paths

Drag a file from the Tools panel project explorer onto the prompt and Mel adds its relative path to the end of what you've typed, with a transient "File · Argument" hint above the input. Dropping onto a running CLI agent session pastes the absolute path into that agent's input instead.

Workflow argument selection

Clicking a workflow in Mel Drive inserts its command into the prompt with the first {argument} placeholder pre-selected, so you type straight over it. Saved prompts insert their body the same way.

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