TUI Reference

Kimün's terminal UI is built around a single editor screen with an activity rail, one collapsible drawer, and a two-line status bar. There are no editing modes: focus is the only state, and everything reachable by keyboard is also reachable by mouse.

Layout

┌──┬────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐
│  │                │                               │
│R │     DRAWER     │            EDITOR             │
│A │  (one of:      │                               │
│I │   FIL FND TAG  │                               │
│L │   LNK OUT CFG) │                               │
│  │                │                               │
├──┴────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┤
│ ⌨ EDITOR  hints…                     global hints │
│ path · ln/col · ✓ saved · backlinks · git         │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Activity rail — the icon strip on the far left. Each cell names a drawer view; the active one is marked with a green border segment. Click a cell (or focus the rail and press Enter) to switch the drawer to that view. CFG is pinned at the bottom.
Drawer — a single panel that shows one view at a time: FILES (file tree), FIND (query search), TAGS, LINKS, OUTLINE, or CFG (configuration overview). Toggle it with Ctrl+T; drag the divider between drawer and editor to resize it.
Editor — always visible, takes the remaining width.
Status bar — line 1 shows the focused surface (⌨ when a text field holds the cursor, ≣ for lists) and its key hints; line 2 shows document state: path, line/column, saved/modified, backlink count, git summary.

Tab / Shift+Tab cycle focus across the visible panels (when focus is not inside the editor text — there Tab indents). Ctrl+L / Ctrl+H move focus right / left from anywhere.

The Leader Key

Press Ctrl+G (the leader) and then a short key sequence to reach any command. Sequences are grouped mnemonically — f for +find, n for +note, v for +vault, and so on. A few examples:

Ctrl+G f f    open the file picker
Ctrl+G n d    open today's journal
Ctrl+G v t    open the theme picker

The full group-by-group tree is on the Keybindings cheat-sheet.

Hesitate mid-sequence and a which-key panel pops up above the status bar showing what each next key does (the delay is configurable — leader_timeout_ms). In lists (not text fields), a bare Space also starts a leader sequence — and with the vim editor backend, so does Space in the editor's Normal mode.

The full tree, with your custom bindings applied, is in the cheatsheet: Ctrl+G ?.

Command Palette

Ctrl+P opens the command palette: every leader command as a fuzzy list, searchable by label or key sequence. Enter runs the selected command. It is the same action set as the leader tree — never a second implementation.

Customizing the leader tree

Sequences, additions, removals, and group captions are configurable in config.toml — see Leader tree overrides.

Drawer Views

FILES

The workspace file tree with a breadcrumb header (click a segment to jump up), type-to-filter, and sorting (Ctrl+R opens the sort dialog: field, order, group-directories). Enter opens a note; typing a name that matches nothing offers a Create row. Right-click a row for the file-operations menu (rename / move / delete), also on F2.

FIND

A live query search over the vault. It opens empty, showing a short syntax primer; type to search. Queries are syntax-highlighted as you type (tags aqua, note targets blue, field keys yellow, negation red, an unterminated quote underlined with a ⚠ reason in the header).

Type — results update live; # autocompletes tags, ? (first char) autocompletes saved searches
Up/Down — move through results · Enter — expand the selected note to show match context, again for more, a third time to collapse
Ctrl+Enter (or Ctrl+N) — open the selected note in the editor; the matched text lights up there
Ctrl+R — sort dialog (written into the query as an or: directive) · Ctrl+D — save the query under a name
Bare <, > or = are shorthand for <{note}, >{note}, ={note} (current note's backlinks / forward links / name). The panel titles itself "Backlinks" when the query is any spelling of the backlinks query.

Ctrl+E toggles straight to FIND from anywhere.

LINKS

Link context for the open note, in three sub-tabs — backlinks · outgoing · unlinked (mentions of the note's name that don't link to it). Switch tabs with b / o / u, ←/→, or by clicking the tab name. Enter opens the selected note; right-click opens its file-operations menu.

OUTLINE

The open note's headings as an indented tree, filterable. Enter jumps the editor to that heading.

CFG

A configuration overview: active theme, leader key, preferences key, which-key timeout, and config file path. t (or Enter) opens the theme picker — a live-preview list of every theme; moving the selection restyles the app instantly, Enter persists, Esc reverts. p opens the full Preferences screen.

Telescope Search

Two modal pickers float over the editor, list on the left, preview on the right:

Ctrl+K — query search (same grammar as FIND); the preview shows the note with matches emphasized and a filename · N matches header.
Ctrl+O — fuzzy file finder by name; typing a new name offers a Create row.

Enter opens the selection (query matches stay highlighted in the editor until your first edit). Ctrl+D saves the current query.

Editor

The editor renders Markdown styled in place — still plain editable source, no separate mode:

Headings bright/bold (H3 yellow), bold/italic styled, bullets dimmed, blockquotes get a ▏ bar, inline and fenced code get a code background
[[wikilinks]] blue and underlined, #tags colored — a single click places the cursor (so link text stays editable), a double-click follows the link / runs the tag query. Ctrl+N does the same from the keyboard
Task lists: - [ ] checkboxes accented, - [x] rows dimmed and struck through
The cursor line reveals raw markup for editing
An empty note shows a ghost tip (Type to start · [[ to link · # to tag · Ctrl+G for commands) that vanishes on the first keystroke

When the cursor enters a link or tag, status line 2 shows where it goes: → people/maria · 3 backlinks or → #tag · tag query.

Following links

With the cursor on a link, Ctrl+Enter follows it (Ctrl+N does the same on terminals that can't distinguish Ctrl+Enter from Enter):

Wikilink — opens the note (picker if several match); relative paths and #fragment suffixes resolve correctly
Markdown link — same; URL — opens in your browser; image — opens in your image viewer
#tag — opens the query search pre-filled with that tag

Find in buffer

Ctrl+F opens a one-line find bar; matches highlight in the buffer; press Ctrl+F / Enter to advance, Shift+Enter to go back. Esc closes.

The pattern is a regular expression, and case is smart: type it all lowercase and it matches any case, add a capital and it matches exactly. The bar says which way it went, along with how many matches there are.

Replace in buffer

Press Tab in the find bar (or run Replace in note from the command palette) to reveal a replacement field. The bar grows to two rows — the pattern and what it matches on top, the replacement and what will happen to it below.

Key	Action
`Enter`	replace the current match and move to the next
`Shift+Enter`	skip this match without replacing
`Ctrl+A`	replace every match in the note
`Tab`	switch between the find and replace fields
`Esc`	close

While you type, the note shows a live preview: every match is drawn as it would read after replacing, in its own colour. The match Enter will take next is drawn in the cursor colour — while the bar is open the terminal caret lives there, so that highlight is what tells you where you are in the note. Nothing is written until you press a key; the preview only changes how the note is drawn.

A few details worth knowing:

Undo is one keystroke. A replace — one match or all of them — costs a single Ctrl+Z (or u in vim mode).
$1 works when you captured something. If the pattern has a capture group, $1, $2 and ${name} expand in the replacement, so (\w+)-(\w+) → $2 $1 swaps them. A $ that doesn't name a real group is left alone, so prices and $x^2$ math stay exactly as typed either way. Write $$ if you want a literal $ next to a digit that is a group number.
An empty replacement deletes. Leaving the field blank and pressing Ctrl+A removes every match; because a blank field also just means "not finished typing", that one case asks for a second Ctrl+A to confirm.
Patterns can't span line breaks, and replacing never changes the number of lines in a note.
Pasting while the bar is open goes into whichever field has focus, not into the note.
Replace is unavailable on the Neovim backend, which has its own :%s.

Text formatting

Action	Binding	Effect
Bold	`Ctrl+B`	`…` around the selection
Italic	`Ctrl+I`	`…`
Strikethrough	`Ctrl+S`	`~~…~~`

Autocomplete

Typing [[ pops up a note list; # (not at line start) pops up tags — filter by typing, accept with Tab/Enter, dismiss with Esc. Works in the editor and in every query field. (Textarea backend only; the Neovim backend uses your own completion setup.)

Pasting

Ctrl+V (or the terminal's native paste) adapts to the clipboard: plain text inserts; a URL over a selection wraps it as [selection](url); an image saves to /assets/ and inserts a relative image link.

Mouse

Full parity with the keyboard:

Gesture	Effect
Click	focus the panel / select the row
Click the selected row again	open it
Click in the editor	place the cursor
Double-click a `[[link]]` / `#tag` in the editor	follow it / run the tag query (same as `Ctrl+N`) — Textarea and Vim backends only
Right-click a file or note row	file-operations menu
Right-click in the editor (no selection)	context menu for the open note
Right-click in the editor (with selection)	copy the selection
Drag the drawer∕editor divider	resize
Click a breadcrumb segment	jump up the tree
Click a rail cell / LINKS tab	switch view
Scroll	scroll the pane under the cursor

Following a link is a double-click rather than Ctrl+click or Cmd+click because neither works in a terminal: the mouse protocol has no way to report Cmd at all, and macOS turns Ctrl+click into a right-click before Kimün ever sees it. A double-click behaves identically on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

On the Neovim backend a click never moves the cursor — Neovim owns the mouse — so double-click-to-follow does nothing there. Use Ctrl+N, which follows whatever the cursor is on regardless of backend.

Capturing the mouse means your terminal's own gestures — middle-click paste, drag-to-select — are suppressed while Kimün runs. Hold Shift to borrow them back for one action, or set mouse = false to hand the mouse to your terminal entirely (every gesture above has a keyboard equivalent). See Configuration → Mouse.

Saved Searches

Ctrl+D saves the active query (from FIND, the query modal, or the panel) under a name; queries are stored as templates, so {note} re-resolves against whichever note is open when run. Open the picker with F3 or Ctrl+G f s: type to filter, 1–9 quick-select, Enter runs it in FIND, Delete removes it. Or type ?name directly in any query field.

Quick Note & Journal

Ctrl+W — quick note dialog: type a thought, Enter saves it to your inbox with a timestamp name (Shift+Enter saves and opens it).
Ctrl+J — open (or create) today's journal entry.

Workspaces

F4 opens the workspace switcher. Manage workspaces (create/rename/delete/re-path) in the Preferences screen under Workspaces.

Preferences Screen

Ctrl+, opens Preferences: workspace paths, theme, keybindings, autosave, indexing. Also reachable via the palette, Ctrl+G v p, or the CFG drawer's p.

Preferences was previously on Ctrl+Shift+P; it moved because that combination is a chord prefix in kitty's default configuration, which swallows the next key.

Key Bindings

The full default table lives on the Keybindings cheat-sheet — one screen, everything on it. All bindings are remappable in Configuration.

Everything else lives behind the leader (Ctrl+G) — press it and pause: the which-key panel pops up and shows you everything available.