Working with it

Settings

One window of nine sections holds every switch, each with one name and a line under it saying what it does.

Settings… is in the panel's ⋯ menu and the lamp's menu, and ⌘, opens it while the panel has the keyboard. Since 1.1 it is the one place for every switch: in 1.0 they were spread over the panel's menu, the Settings window, a getting-started list and a row's menu, and one switch had three names in three places. Now a menu that offers a switch uses the name Settings gives it.

The sections run down the side. The two that act on your sessions or send something off this Mac, Acting from the panel and LampMaster, carry an orange edge.

Panel

• Panel lives in: its own window above the others, or under the lamp in the menu bar. See the menu bar lamp.
• Show a lamp in the menu bar: always on while the panel lives in the menu bar, since nothing else could bring it back.
• Count beside the lamp: how many sessions want you · how many are at work.
• Width, and Show only what's waiting: rows that want nothing from you step aside, and a line says how many.
• Show sessions started in a terminal. See sessions in a terminal.
• Hidden projects: the ones you hid from the column, and the way back.
• Open at login.

Clicks & keys

• Accessibility: lets a click bring the right editor window forward, not just the app. Grant… asks macOS.
• Also open the conversation's tab in VS Code: off by default, because VS Code asks you to confirm every time. See clicking a row.
• Search bar from any app: inside the panel ⌘K always works; off by default, because ⌘K alone would take shortcuts VS Code begins with.

Under The Hub's terminal, since 1.2:

• A click opens the session in the Hub: a click on a session in the background, or in tmux on this Mac or another, opens it in the Hub instead of jumping. Sessions in an editor still jump. On by default. See the Hub and the live view.
• Look: the frame around the session, Night, Lagoon, Ember or Paper, Claude Code keeping its own colours inside; or VS Code Light and VS Code Dark, which bring VS Code's terminal colours with them.
• Colours (since 1.5): with Look set to Custom, a Background and a Text colour, picked freely.
• Font and Line spacing (since 1.4): any fixed-width family, and 1.0 to 1.5 between lines.
• Text size: the session's text, in every live window at once.
• Claude Code's look (since 1.3): with the helper, the conversation drawn like Claude Code's VS Code panel, in LampBoard's windows (the default), everywhere, or off.

Alerts

• Notify me when a session waits for me or fails, and Also when a turn finishes.
• Say it aloud when I'm away from the keys.
• Mute all alerts for an hour, I'm away, and Projects you've silenced from a row's Quiet menu.
• Skip Claude Code's phone pushes while I'm at this Mac.

All of them are on being told when you are away.

Claude Code & Codex

• Connected agents: the few lines in Claude Code's and Codex's settings, with a backup, through which each session tells the panel what it is doing. Connect… writes them; Disconnect… takes them out, after asking.
• Install the LampBoard helper, with Ask Claude Code what it does to read what Claude Code finds in it. See the helper.
• Show what waits elsewhere above each prompt: one line above the prompt of the other sessions, in the terminal and the Claude app.

Acting from the panel

• Send messages to sessions: write to a session from ⌘K or from its terminal in the Hub. It asks before it turns on.
• Answer permission prompts and questions: needs the helper. Up to 55 seconds for a permission and 20 for a question, then the session asks as usual. See what it asks for.
• Safety catch while I'm away: with the helper, a command that deletes recursively, force-pushes, discards changes or runs as root waits for you. On by default.
• Permissions in sessions LampBoard starts: the permission mode of the sessions you start or resume from the Hub, LampMaster's, and the ones moved to LampBoard. Ask, as Claude Code does is the default. Bypass on Shift+Tab adds bypass to the modes Shift+Tab cycles: Claude Code allows this only from a session's start. Bypass: never ask starts each session in it, and Claude Code then runs any command and edits any file without asking. Sessions already running keep their mode.

LampMaster

Let LampMaster suggest, how often it checks, which model, Let sessions ask LampMaster, and the kinds of suggestion you turned off. See LampMaster.

Other Macs

The machines whose sessions appear as rows, through a tunnel over your own ssh, with Connect… and Disconnect for each. See sessions on another machine.

Privacy & data

• Usage left: asks Anthropic how much of your plan is left, with your Claude Code sign-in. See usage left.
• Update check: only when you ask, from About & help.
• Keep a search index of my conversations: local, no tokens, the last ninety days. It is what ⌘K and LampMaster search.

About & help

• LampBoard, its version, and Check for updates…. See updating.
• Getting started: the seven first screens again. See the first minute.
• What LampBoard can do: every capability in a sentence. See the catalogue.
• Practice with samples: three invented rows in your panel, removed with one click.
• What the lights mean: the legend.
• Clear the list: empties the column, after asking. A session comes back with its next signal.