Profiles

Profiles

A profile is the layout: which panes, how big, and which slot goes in each. Three ship. Switch with:

bothy config set profile editor
bothy                            # or --profile editor for one run

bothy layout prints the Zellij layout a profile would produce, without opening anything.

cockpit — the default

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│            browser — 100% w, 50% h               │
├─────────────────────────────┬────────────────────┤
│        agent  60%           │     side  40%      │
└─────────────────────────────┴────────────────────┘

For supervising an agent working on a repository. The browser takes the top half, for reading what changed, and the agent starts focused. The editor is reached through $EDITOR from Yazi, git or the agent rather than occupying a pane.

editor — three columns

┌──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
│  editor 40%  │  agent  35%  │  side   25%  │
└──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘

For working in the editor with an agent beside it. The editor slot takes the largest pane and starts focused. There is no file browser pane, since the editor has its own.

minimal — agent and a shell

┌────────────────────────┬───────────────────┐
│       agent  65%       │     side  35%     │
└────────────────────────┴───────────────────┘

For small screens and SSH sessions, where a file browser costs more rows than it is worth. The tab bar is off for the same reason; the status bar stays, as the only on-screen reminder of Zellij's modal keys.

Writing your own

Profiles are TOML. Copy one out of profiles/ into ~/.config/bothy/profiles/, change it, and name it in your config.

name        = "wide"
description = "Browser down one side"

[[rows]]
panes = [
    { slot = "browser", size = "30%" },
    { slot = "agent", name = "agent", focus = true },
]

rows stack top to bottom; several panes in one row sit side by side. A pane either names a slot — browser, agent, editor, mux, terminal — or names nothing and gets a plain shell. Exactly one pane should have focus = true.

The three-pane invariant is about capability, not about your layout. bothy reports panes as available when the profile renders and the multiplexer builds what it describes; a two-pane profile of your own is fine, and bothy doctor will tell you what it got (ADR-017).

Swapping parts, and theming · All commands