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🖥️ Terminal User Interface

RLM Code ships with a single unified TUI built on Textual and Rich. It provides a complete research-grade development environment with 5 tabs including a dedicated 🔬 Research tab for experiment tracking, trajectory viewing, benchmarks, session replay, and live event streaming.

🚀 Launch

rlm-code

That's it. One command, one TUI, everything in one place.

📦 Dependency

Textual is a required dependency of RLM Code and is installed automatically with pip install rlm-code.

🗂️ The Five Tabs

Tab Shortcut F-Key Purpose
🔁 RLM Ctrl+1 F2 Converse with LLMs, run slash commands
📁 Files Ctrl+2 F3 Browse project tree, syntax-highlighted preview (draggable split in one-screen mode)
📋 Details Ctrl+3 F4 Status panel, snapshot diff viewer
⚡ Shell Ctrl+4 F5 Persistent stateful shell (env preserved)
🔬 Research Ctrl+5 F6 Dashboard, trajectory, benchmarks, replay, events

Switch tabs with keyboard shortcuts, Tab / Shift+Tab to cycle, or click the focus bar buttons below the header.

📐 Layout Modes

One-Screen Mode (default)

Only the active tab is visible, maximizing screen real estate. Toggle with Ctrl+O or /layout single.

Multi-Pane Mode

All panes visible simultaneously. Toggle with Ctrl+O or /layout multi. Individual panes can be shown/hidden with /pane.

🔬 Research Tab

The Research tab is where experiment data lives. It has 5 internal sub-tabs:

Sub-Tab What It Shows
📊 Dashboard Run ID, status, reward, steps, tokens, cost, reward sparkline
📈 Trajectory Step-by-step timeline showing action, reward, tokens, success
🏆 Benchmarks Leaderboard table from /rlm bench runs
⏪ Replay Step-through controls for time-travel debugging
📡 Events Live event stream from the RLM event bus

🔬 See It in Action

  1. Run /rlm bench preset=dspy_quick in the RLM tab
  2. Press Ctrl+5 to switch to Research
  3. Dashboard populates with real run metrics and sparkline
  4. Click Trajectory to see the step-by-step breakdown

See 🔬 Research Tab for full details.

Mode Routing in RLM

In Local/BYOK connection modes, the RLM tab can auto-route likely coding prompts to the harness loop. ACP is supported via /connect acp, but ACP keeps harness auto-routing off by default. For controlled pure-recursive experiments, set RLM_TUI_HARNESS_AUTO=0 before launching the TUI.

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

🗂️ Tab Switching

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+1 / F2 🔁 RLM
Ctrl+2 / F3 📁 Files
Ctrl+3 / F4 📋 Details
Ctrl+4 / F5 ⚡ Shell
Ctrl+5 / F6 🔬 Research
Tab Cycle to next tab
Shift+Tab Cycle to previous tab
Escape Back to RLM

⚡ Actions

Shortcut Action
F7 / Ctrl+Y 📋 Copy last response
Ctrl+O 🔀 Toggle one-screen mode
Ctrl+K 🔍 Open command palette
Ctrl+G 🔁 Focus RLM input
Ctrl+L 🧹 Clear logs
Ctrl+R 🔄 Refresh preview
Ctrl+Q 🚪 Quit

📌 Pane Toggles (Multi-Pane Mode)

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+B Toggle Files pane
Ctrl+J Toggle Details pane
Ctrl+T Toggle Shell pane

🎨 Theme

The TUI uses a true-black background (#010101) with a purple accent palette inspired by the research aesthetic:

Element Color Hex
Background Near-black #010101
Pane borders Purple-blue #2f6188
Accent Purple #7c3aed
Active accent Bright purple #a78bfa
Title text Cyan #8de7ff
RLM text Light blue-white #dce7f3

🧩 Widget Library

Both standard panes and the Research tab draw from a shared widget library:

  • 🎭 Animated: ThinkingSpinner, ProgressPulse, SparklineChart, TypewriterText, RewardFlash, StatusIndicator
  • 📊 Panels: FileBrowser, CodePreview, ResponseArea, PromptBox, MetricsPanel, TimelinePanel, LeaderboardPanel

See 🧩 Widgets for the full API reference.

📚 Next Steps