Workspace & layouts
Arrange chats, terminals, and previews in Dices with layout presets, a dockable workspace mode, and a live in-app preview.
Dices gives you two complementary ways to arrange the main area so you can watch and drive several agent chats at once: quick layout presets in the titlebar, and a fully dockable Workspace mode where chat, terminal, and preview become draggable panels. There’s also a live in-app Preview that embeds your dev server.
Layout switcher — quick presets
The layout switcher lives in the titlebar and instantly rearranges the main area into one of three presets. Use it when you want to watch multiple agent chats running side by side.
| Preset | Shortcut | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Single | ⌘1 | One pane, full width |
| 2-up | ⌘2 | Two panes side by side |
| 2×2 grid | ⌘3 | Four panes in a grid |
On Windows, use Ctrl 1 / Ctrl 2 / Ctrl 3.
Tip: The grid layouts are perfect for running several agents in parallel — kick off a task in each pane and keep an eye on all of them without tab-switching.
Workspace mode — a dockable layout
Click the panel-grid icon to enter Workspace mode, a fully dockable layout built on dockview. In this mode, Chat, Terminal, and Preview each become a panel you can:
- Drag to a new position
- Dock to any edge or into a group
- Resize by dragging the dividers
- Split to view more than one at a time
Your arrangement is saved and restored, so the workspace you build is the workspace you come back to.
The panels are context-aware: they follow the active chat. When you switch chats, the Chat, Terminal, and Preview panels update to reflect the chat you’re now working in — your layout stays put, but the content follows you.
Note: Workspace mode and the layout switcher solve different problems. The switcher is for quickly tiling several chats at once; Workspace mode is for crafting one detailed, persistent arrangement of chat + terminal + preview around a single chat.
Live Preview
Dices includes an in-app live Preview that embeds your dev server directly in the app, so you can see your running application next to the agent that’s building it — no need to alt-tab to a browser.
Element picker
The Preview includes an element picker. Select an element in your running app and Dices sends that element’s context into the composer, so you can ask the agent about — or request changes to — a specific part of your UI without describing it by hand.
- Open the Preview (start your dev server first; see Runbooks).
- Activate the element picker.
- Click the element you want to work on.
- The selected element’s context is dropped into the composer, ready for your prompt.
Tip: Combine Workspace mode with the Preview: dock the Preview beside your Chat, use the element picker to target a component, and watch the agent’s edits appear live.
Where to go next
- Drive the Terminal & AI commands inside any layout.
- Learn every shortcut, including ⌘1/⌘2/⌘3, in the Keyboard shortcuts reference.
- Recolor the whole app in Theming & appearance.