Signing in and finding your way

Sign in

The console answers only to the console administrator of the machine that serves it. The sign-in page asks for an alias and a password — the credential an operator sets on the host with saphan console admin set. There is one administrator; whoever signs in is that administrator.

Signing in and signing an act are two different things. The password opens the console; an act recorded from the console — deciding a gate, merging a pull request, editing a wagon — is signed with a passkey on your device, never with the password. A browser gets its passkey once, from a one-use code printed on the host by saphan console device enrol --web. See saphan console for both commands, and for retiring a lost passkey.

After sign-in the console opens on Today.

The shell: header, sidebar, bottom panel

The header carries, from the left: the product name with a ✦ mark that opens Catch a spark, then Search and jump (Cmd-K, or Ctrl-K), the Simple / Advanced switch, and the theme button. On a narrow screen a menu button opens the sidebar as a drawer.

The sidebar is the same on every screen. It is built from the console's one screen registry, so it never differs between screens. Each group has a Simple name and an Advanced name:

A group heading folds and unfolds its rows when you click it, and the console remembers which groups you folded. Under the groups: the live money line and Settings. Signing out is in Settings, on the This device card; the dialog asks whether conversations still running on the server should keep running or close.

Counts and dots to the right of a sidebar row are facts from the record. A dot carries a state — for example a role that is live — never a number; hovering a role's row says why the fleet advises rotating it, when it does. When a count is unknown the console shows nothing — never a zero it did not measure.

The bottom panel opens from the bottom of the window and has three tabs: Terminal, Train and Files. You can also pin a conversation to it. The Terminal starts the saphan CLI on the console's host only when you press its start button, and it runs as the gateway's user and in its workspace, not as you; a step that needs your passkey sends you to the browser's passkey prompt instead of signing in the terminal. ⚠ The Train and Files tabs are empty in this release.

Simple and Advanced

The switch in the header changes the wording and the detail on each screen, not which screens exist: both modes show the same sidebar rows. Simple uses plain names (Today, Ideas, Rules, Costs); Advanced uses the record's names (Yours, Sparks, Policies, Ledger · Costs) and adds the detail an operator reads — register lines, raw rehearsal output, identifiers. The choice is remembered in this browser and can also be set in Settings → You.

Search, theme, language, keyboard

• Search and jump (Cmd-K / Ctrl-K) finds any screen by name and also switches the theme and the mode.
• Theme cycles system → light → dark; system, which follows your operating system, is the default.
• Language is English unless you choose otherwise in Settings → You. English and Polish ship.
• Keys: Cmd-K / Ctrl-K search; Cmd-Shift-I / Ctrl-Shift-I Catch a spark from anywhere; Cmd-Enter catches; Esc closes a dialog, a drop-down panel or the drawer. In a conversation Enter sends and Shift-Enter starts a new line, unless you chose Cmd-Enter to send in Settings → You.

Reading a screen

Every screen has the same anatomy, reading from the top: a title with a one-line lede, then the screen's filters or tabs, then its rows or cards, with the acts on each.

• The same column is in the same place in every row, so the same act is always under the same act.
• Money always carries its unit and its billing class: metered money somebody is billed, or a subscription allowance nobody is billed for.
• An empty list says why it is empty. "Nothing here matches the filter you chose — which is not the same as nothing being here" is a different sentence from "Nothing here yet".
• Sample data is marked. In Advanced, a value drawn from sample data is outlined with a dashed amber line; on a screen that reads nothing from the record, both modes show a band under the lede saying so.
• Where a screen would otherwise need a paragraph of explanation it carries an information button instead: one sentence, on demand.