The OpenSpec side panel

The side panel is the reason spekterm exists. Instead of switching to an editor to read the spec, you keep the change your agent is working on next to its terminal, and watch it change as the agent writes.

The panel has two identities, switched at its top: OpenSpec and Files. This page covers OpenSpec; Files has its own page. A repository without an openspec/ directory only offers Files.

This change

This change shows one change, with one tab per artifact: the proposal, the design, the spec deltas, the tasks, and any data files the change carries. The tabs follow the order your OpenSpec schema defines.

• Tasks shows progress and the tasks grouped under their headings. The progress count is also in the status bar.
• Spec deltas marks each requirement as added, modified, removed, or renamed, and highlights the WHEN / THEN keywords of scenarios.
• Everything updates as files change on disk. When the agent checks off a task, the tab updates.

With focus in the change view, Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab move between artifact tabs, and the arrow keys, Page Up / Page Down, Home, End, and Space scroll the content.

Choosing the change

spekterm does not guess which change a session is working on from the agent’s output — a panel that sometimes jumped to the wrong change would be worse than none. You choose:

1. Open Browse.
2. Expand Changes (Active or Archived) and pick one.

That change is now anchored for this folder, and This change shows it. Each folder remembers its own choice across restarts. If a repository has exactly one active change, it is shown without choosing.

Browse also lists every spec. Opening a spec shows which changes touch it.

Continue a change

When the change is missing an artifact, This change shows Continue and lists what is not written yet. Pressing it sends /opsx:continue <change> to the focused claude session in this repository, which writes the next artifact. spekterm does not decide which artifact comes next — OpenSpec does.

Continue is disabled, with the reason shown, when no session can take it: no session in this repository, the focused session is a shell, it is not running, or the change lives in a different working directory from the session.

Changes in other worktrees

If you keep one change per git worktree, the panel shows changes from every worktree of the repository, each labeled with its working directory. When the change you are looking at lives in a worktree where no session is running, Open a session there starts a claude session in that worktree and anchors the change for you.

Showing another repository

The panel normally shows the repository selected on the rail, but it can show any folder in your workspace — for example, to read a spec in a shared library while your session works in an app. Click the source indicator at the top of the panel and pick a folder; Back to the selected repo returns. The status bar shows panel: <name> while the panel shows another repository.

Moving between specs and files

From an artifact, Open in Files opens the underlying file in the Files identity. From a file under openspec/, View in OpenSpec goes back. Ctrl+P (with focus in the side panel) opens quick open to find any file by name — see Files and quick open.

Maximize, Graph, and Timeline

Ctrl+Shift+M maximizes the side panel over the session tabs and the terminal, which keep running underneath; press it again, or Restore, to go back. The rail stays visible.

The OpenSpec identity has two more views, shown only while the panel is maximized (choosing one maximizes it for you):

• Graph — how specs and changes relate: which changes touch which specs.
• Timeline — the life cycle of each change on a time axis.

Click a change in either view to open it in This change; click a spec in Graph to open it in Browse. Restoring the panel brings back the view you had before, at the same artifact and scroll position.

Keeping up with the disk

The panel watches the repository and redraws when files change. If it stops updating after a while, your system’s file-watch limit is probably too low — see Troubleshooting.