Tabs

Tabs are Mel's top-level workspaces. Each tab holds its own pane layout — one pane or a whole split tree — and every pane in every tab keeps running whether it's visible or not, so a build in a background tab finishes while you work elsewhere.

Shortcuts

ctrl+T, ctrl+W, and ctrl+tab work even while the prompt is focused, and ctrl+tab works inside full-screen TUI sessions too — it's consumed by Mel and never reaches the underlying program.

If you've starred a tab config as your default, ctrl+T opens that config — panes, directories, and startup commands included — instead of a blank tab.

Where tabs live

Tabs render in the left sidebar (the vertical tabs rail), not a horizontal strip. Each pane gets its own row there: click to focus, hover ✕ or middle-click to close, double-click to rename, right-click for the context menu with rename, close, and color options. A color you pick tints the owning tab.

The + button in the titlebar opens the new-tab menu: a plain new tab, your saved tab configs, git worktree entries for tracked repos, and "New Tab Config" to author a new recipe.

Titles

A tab's title follows the active pane's working directory by default. Titles can also be set by:

• You — double-click the pane's sidebar row and type.
• An agent conversation — starting one retitles the tab to the conversation's title.
• A tab config — the title field (with {{param}} substitution) names tabs it opens.

Independence

Each tab is a fully independent pane tree. Pane IDs are globally unique, splits in one tab never affect another, and closing a tab cleans up its PTYs and agents. See Split panes for working within a tab and Sessions for per-pane state.

Related

• Vertical tabs — the sidebar rail
• Tab configs — reusable TOML tab recipes
• Tab customization — density and row content