# Running a line yourself

> A real terminal on the machine, from a phone — the modifiers a soft keyboard does not have, more than one pane at a time, and output that is still there tomorrow.

Sometimes you do not want an agent. You want to run one command and read what it
says.

That is what a **pane** is: a real terminal on the machine, running one line you
gave it, as the account the agents run as, in the folder you are in. You watch
it work, you type into whatever it started, and the output stays on screen after
it finishes.

![a pane on the machine — play, live and running, with vite's output still on it](https://beafk.app/docs-shots/terminal.webp)

## Where one comes from

Every pane starts from a line somebody wrote down.

- **[Commands](https://beafk.app/docs/commands.md)** — the lines your project is run by, as buttons.
  This is where nearly every pane comes from.
- **A new one, typed here.** The commands screen runs a line you type and keeps
  it as a button afterwards, so the line needs a name.
- **An agent's own CLI**, opened from its row in settings.

> [!NOTE]
> There is no bare shell prompt in the panel — nowhere to type `cd` and then
> five more commands against it. Each pane is one line. If what you want is a
> prompt, that is `ssh` — and what is worth typing at one is on
> [the command line](https://beafk.app/docs/every-command.md).

## Driving it with a thumb

A CLI is driven by keys a phone does not have, so the pane carries
[its own row of them](https://beafk.app/docs/keys-a-phone-does-not-have.md) above the keyboard.

## Reading it on a small screen

- **A− and A+** make the type bigger or smaller, and the machine is told the new
  shape immediately, so a build that writes for eighty columns gets eighty
  columns. Your choice is remembered per device: big on the phone, small on the
  laptop.
- **Scroll back with a drag.** Most things worth watching take the whole screen
  and keep no history in the browser, so the pane asks the machine for it: drag
  the output and it walks back through what has already gone past.
- **The chrome does not move.** The shelf, the header, the facts, the output and
  the keys are five bands in that order, and none of them slide away while you
  read.

## More than one at once

A machine with a dev server, a test watcher and a build on it is three panes,
and they are three tabs on a shelf across the top of the pane. Tap one to go to
it; each keeps running whether or not it is the one on screen.

A pane is identified by the machine and the line it runs in. Pressing the same
command again — from the launcher, from a chip or from the corner card — lands
on the tab that is already open rather than starting a second copy.

## It survives, and so does your place in it

Like a chat, a pane keeps running when you close the tab. Come back and
the output is still there and the process is still going. A long-running one is
a chip on the shelf above the message box, from any screen.

A phone locking its screen closes the connection. That is the end of *this
connection*, not of the session: the pane says so and offers one tap to come
back, and what is on the machine has carried on without you. See
[closing the tab](https://beafk.app/docs/closing-the-tab.md).

## What it is good for

- Reading a log the hard way.
- `git status` when you do not believe the git screen.
- Checking whether the thing you think is installed is installed.
- Watching a dev server or a build, live, with somewhere to press stop.
- Answering a CLI that is asking you something in a menu, with the arrows.

## Who can open one

Anybody who can open the machine at **full** level. Read-only cannot start one,
which is the main practical difference between the two grant levels. See
[who may open what](https://beafk.app/docs/who-may-open-what.md).

## Root

A pane is not root. It runs as the account the agents run as — on Linux a user
of their own, on a Mac you. If you need root, use `ssh` and `sudo`.

---

beafk documentation · The panel · https://beafk.app/docs/the-terminal

In this section:
- The home screen — https://beafk.app/docs/the-home-screen.md
- Settings — https://beafk.app/docs/settings.md
- Pictures, both ways — https://beafk.app/docs/pictures-both-ways.md
- Seeing it before it is built — https://beafk.app/docs/seeing-it-before-it-is-built.md
- Running a line yourself — https://beafk.app/docs/the-terminal.md (this page)
- The keys a phone does not have — https://beafk.app/docs/keys-a-phone-does-not-have.md

Every page, one line each: https://beafk.app/docs/llms.txt
All of it in one file: https://beafk.app/docs/llms-full.txt