Understanding the Interface

Magus is organized into a few main areas. Here’s a quick tour so you know where everything lives.

Mode strip

A narrow strip on the far left holds the Magus logo and an icon for each workbench mode:

Chat: conversations and the message composer.
Brain: knowledge brains and pages.
Files: the file browser. A Drive-style view of everything you have uploaded or had generated. See Files & Storage for the full tour.
Library: your prompts and skills.
Agents: your custom agents.

At the bottom of the strip you’ll find your usage indicator, the notifications bell, a help menu (documentation, FAQ, support), and your avatar. The avatar menu holds Scheduled Jobs, Settings, the theme picker, and sign out.

Navigation pane

Next to the mode strip sits the navigation pane. It always shows the workspace switcher and a Search entry (also available via Cmd/Ctrl+K), plus the navigator for the current mode.

In Chat mode it contains:

New chat: start a fresh conversation at any time.
Favorites: conversations you’ve starred appear in their own section.
Folders: group related conversations together. Drag conversations onto folders to organize them.
Conversation list: your recent conversations, grouped by date. Click any conversation to open it.
Threads: nested under their parent conversation. Click a thread to jump to it.
Show history: opens the full conversation history and trash.

Chat area

The center of the screen is where your conversations happen.

Header: the conversation title (click it to rename), the favorite star, the Tools button, and a menu with rename, share, and archive actions.
Message history: all messages, rendered with full markdown support, including code blocks, tables, and images.
Streaming responses: AI responses appear in real time as they are generated.
Tool activity: when the AI uses tools (like web search), you’ll see progress cards inline with the messages.
Composer: the text box at the bottom. Type your message and press Enter to send, or Shift+Enter for a new line. The row below the text holds the + menu (attach files, insert prompts, slash commands), the image and video generation toggles, the model selector, and the context-window indicator.

Tools panel

The Tools button in the conversation header opens a panel with several tabs:

Prompts: browse and activate prompts from your library.
Brains: open brain pages next to the chat.
Drafts: documents the AI has written in this conversation.
Tasks: the conversation’s task list.
Files: files attached to the current conversation.
Members: participants in a shared conversation.
Settings: conversation-specific settings such as a custom system prompt and sampling values.

Some items (threads, drafts, brain pages, PDFs) open in a companion pane beside the chat so you can see both at once.

Tab bar (optional)

The workbench can show a horizontal tab bar above the main panel for switching between open conversations and pages. The tab bar is off by default; turn it on under Settings → Preferences → Interface → Show tabs.