Terminal

Terminal

Shells in containers, on nodes, in debug containers and on your own computer open as tabs in the dock at the bottom. A tab can be split into panes, each its own shell; snippets type saved commands with the current namespace, pod or cluster filled in and safely quoted; and broadcast sends what you type to several panes at once — only after you confirm.

Contents: Panes · Keyboard · Snippets · Placeholders and quoting · Broadcast input · Moving snippets to another computer

For opening shells see Shells and the terminal, Shell on a node and Debug containers.

Panes

The bar above a terminal tab has Split right and Split down. Choose what opens in the new pane:

Choice	What you pick
The same as the current pane	Nothing: another shell like the focused one.
Local terminal	Nothing: a shell on your computer with kubectl pointed at the cluster.
Shell in a container	Namespace, pod (running pods only) and container.
Shell on a node	The node. Asks the same confirmation as a node shell tab.
Debug container	Namespace and pod, then the debug container's options, with the same confirmation as from a pod.

• Up to 8 panes per tab. Close pane closes the focused one; closing the tab closes all of them.
• Drag the line between two panes to resize them.
• Splitting or closing a pane never restarts the shells in the other panes.
• Every pane is a separate session: closing it ends its shell, and a node-shell pane removes its temporary pod as a node shell tab does.

Keyboard

Key	What it does
Ctrl+Shift+Left / Right / Up / Down	Move the focus to the pane in that direction
Arrow keys on a focused divider	Resize the panes on both sides of it
Ctrl+Shift+E	Leave the terminal: the focus moves to its dock tab (see Accessibility)
Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V	Copy the selection / paste

Snippets

Snippets in the pane bar lists your saved commands (with a filter once you have more than 8):

• Insert types the command into the focused pane without running it, so you can edit it first.
• Run types it and presses Enter.

Snippets always go to the focused pane only — also while broadcast is on. A snippet that needs a value the pane does not have (for example {{pod}} in a local terminal) is shown as not available there, with the reason.

Manage snippets… adds, edits and deletes them: a Name (up to 120 characters) and a Command (up to 4096 characters, one line is typed). A snippet cannot contain control characters, invisible characters or text-direction marks. Snippets are saved in settings.json (up to 500).

Placeholders and quoting

Placeholder	Filled with
{{namespace}}	The namespace of the focused pane's pod
{{pod}}	The pod
{{container}}	The container
{{cluster}}	The cluster's name in Sextant
{{context}}	The kubeconfig context

Each value is quoted for the shell of the pane, so a name can never run as a command:

• sh, bash, zsh, fish (containers, nodes, debug containers, the local shell on Linux and macOS): a plain name stays as it is; anything else goes in single quotes, a ' inside written as '\''.
• PowerShell (the local shell on Windows): always in single quotes, single quotes inside (also typographic ones) doubled.
• A shell Sextant does not know yet: single quotes, and a value with a quote is refused.

A value with a backslash, a control character, an invisible character or a text-direction mark is refused in every shell, and the snippet is not available in that pane. Example: kubectl -n {{namespace}} logs {{pod}} -c {{container}} --tail=100.

Broadcast input

Broadcast types what you type in one pane into several panes at once — useful for the same check on a few replicas. It is off by default and cannot start by accident:

1. Choose Broadcast… in the pane bar.
2. Tick at least two panes; none is ticked at first. Panes of the tab's cluster are listed first; panes of other clusters are listed apart, so you see when a pick reaches another cluster. The dialog says how many panes and which clusters you chose.
3. Choose Start broadcast. Every target pane shows a banner: Broadcast is on: your input goes to N panes. Clusters: …
4. Your first keystroke opens a confirmation, Send your input to several panes?, which takes the keyboard focus. What you typed before confirming is not sent — to any pane. Choose Send to go on.

Broadcast ends when you choose Stop broadcast, when you refuse the confirmation, or when any of its panes closes (you chose that set of panes, not what is left of it). The next start asks again.

Moving snippets to another computer

Export… in Views and workspaces includes your snippets when Include terminal snippets is ticked (the default). They are exported exactly as written, so do not keep tokens or passwords in them. Import… previews each added or changed snippet with spaces and hidden characters made visible, and refuses snippets with control, invisible or text-direction characters. Files exported by Sextant 0.13 are still imported (without snippets).

AI agents (MCP) and extensions cannot open panes, use snippets or broadcast.