Panels

Open Choice is built around a panel-based interface. Each panel handles a distinct part of your workflow. You can open, close, and rearrange panels independently to suit how you work.

Core workflow panels

Recent Files — The primary entry point. Lists all .oce files you have opened, with tags, archive status, and a search filter in the toolbar. Click a file to open it in the editor. The toolbar also has buttons to create a new file and run the currently selected file. You can also drag and drop .oce, .ocr, or .toml files from your file manager directly onto the app window to open them.

Row actions include starring a file (★), assigning it to a project group, tagging, archiving, and revealing in the OS file manager. Use the Show starred only toggle in the toolbar to filter to starred files. Use the Project dropdown to filter to a specific project group.

Editor — The Monaco-powered text editor for .oce files. Provides syntax highlighting for the OCE format, alias resolution hints, inline error markers, and task block folding. Each task block (a [["..."]] header and its parameters) is a collapsible fold region. Use Ctrl+Shift+O to open the Workspace Symbols panel and jump to any task block across the workspace.

A ▶ Run this task CodeLens button appears above every [["..."]] header. Clicking it queues only that block, not the entire file. A Run selection toolbar button queues whatever text is currently selected in the editor.

If a file is modified externally while it is open, the editor detects the change and prompts to reload. Changes saved from within Open Choice do not trigger this prompt.

Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+S save, Ctrl+Enter queue the file, Ctrl+Shift+Enter repeat the last queued run, F1 context-sensitive endpoint help, Ctrl+W close the focused panel tab, Ctrl+Shift+P open the command palette.

Toolbar buttons (left to right): Save, Run (queue), Run selection, Help (F1), Timeline, Reveal in App Explorer, Reveal in OS Explorer, Undo, Redo, Fold all, Unfold all, Format (normalises spacing and blank lines), Problems.

Console — A persistent output panel showing structured run events and live progress. Displays event types (Started, Progress, Artifact, Warning, Error, Finished) as they arrive from the plugin. The toolbar has buttons to clear output, toggle auto-scroll, and jump to the top or bottom. Press Ctrl+F while the console is focused to open an inline search bar — type to jump to the first match, use Enter / Shift+Enter to cycle forward and backward, and Escape to close.

Run Output — A transient panel that opens automatically each time a run starts and shows its event stream. Unlike the Console, each run opens a fresh Run Output tab.

Queue — Shows jobs that are queued, running, or recently completed in the current session. Displays each job’s status, start time, and duration. Useful for monitoring multi-task runs with many queued entries.

Scheduled Jobs — Manages recurring runs. Create a scheduled job by selecting a .oce file and entering a cron expression. Each job can be enabled or disabled individually, edited, triggered immediately with Run now, or deleted. The scheduler fires due jobs approximately every 60 seconds while the app is open.

Run History — A log of all completed runs across sessions. Browse past runs, see their status, and re-open output artifacts.

Plugin management panels

Plugins — The installed plugins list. Shows name, version, and trust status for each plugin. Click a plugin to open its detail page, which includes the runtime events log, self-test, verify, and uninstall actions. The toolbar includes buttons to check for updates and install from a local file. When updates are available, a yellow badge appears on the plugin count in the status bar.

Browse Plugins — The online registry browser. Lists available plugins with name, publisher, version, and description. Click Install on any entry to begin installation with the full verification and consent flow.

Trust Center — Security overview for all installed plugins. Shows trust status and tier for each plugin, active integrity alerts from the issue system, and a warning banner when developer mode is active. Use this panel to monitor plugin health and investigate quarantine events.

File management panels

File Explorer — A file system browser rooted at a configurable directory. Navigate folders, open .oce files directly, and bookmark frequently used locations.

Search — Full-text search across all .oce files in a directory. Enter a query to see matching files and preview context around each match. Click a result to open the file.

Workspace Symbols — Lists every [["plugin::endpoint"]] task across all open workspace files. Click a row to jump directly to that task block in the editor. The toolbar includes a filter input, an Errors only toggle, and a summary line showing how many files were indexed and how many contain errors. Opened via Ctrl+Shift+O or View → Workspace Symbols. The panel also supports a cross-file “Find references for this task” mode opened from the Editor context menu.

Editor utility panels

Help Explorer — Browsable plugin documentation. Lists every installed plugin’s endpoints with parameters, types, required/optional status, defaults, and examples. Use the search bar to filter across all plugins at once. Supports copy-as-call and insert-as-template actions.

Endpoint Help Page — A focused help view for a single endpoint, opened from the editor (F1 or the help toolbar button) or from the Help Explorer. Shows the full parameter table and all examples for that endpoint.

Editor Help — Inline help attached to an open editor tab. Provides parameter hints and validation feedback for the endpoint referenced on the current line.

OCE Diff — Side-by-side comparison of two .oce files. Read-only Monaco diff view. Opened from the Recent Files toolbar or the editor tab context menu.

Timeline — Tracks experiments over time. Stores snapshots of your .oce file content at each open and save, so you can compare configurations and restore earlier versions. Snapshots can be given user-defined labels and filtered by date range. See The Timeline for a full reference.

Productivity panels

Snippets — Saved parameter snippets from plugin documentation. Insert a snippet directly into the active editor or copy it to the clipboard.

Templates — Plugin-contributed .oce starter templates. Shows every template a plugin declared at install time, filterable by plugin and category. Row actions insert the template into the active editor or copy it to the clipboard. Opened via View → Templates.

Aliases — Manage user-defined aliases inline without opening Settings. Add, edit, and remove aliases from a panel rather than navigating to the settings modal.

Notepad — A free-text Monaco scratchpad. Useful for scratch calculations, notes, and temporary parameter sets. Content is auto-saved to local storage as you type.

Notepad Timeline — Snapshot history for the Notepad. Stores periodic saves so you can browse and restore earlier drafts.

Endpoint Scratchpad — A split-view workspace for running ad-hoc plugin task content without saving a file. The top pane is a Monaco editor where you write a task block; the bottom pane streams the plugin’s output. Useful for quick experiments and testing parameter shapes before committing them to an .oce file. Opened via Tools → Endpoint Scratchpad.

Protocol Log (developer) — Live log of every protocol client call the app makes. Visible only when Developer Mode is enabled in Settings. Opened via Tools → Protocol Log. Use this when debugging plugin protocol issues or capturing evidence for a bug report.

App Help — A built-in reference for Open Choice. Covers the main concepts, a full keyboard shortcut table, editor toolbar button reference, and tech stack notes.

Status bar

A thin bar at the very bottom of the window shows live application state at a glance:

Item	What it shows
Plugins	Number of installed plugins. A yellow badge appears when plugin updates are available.
Running / Queued	Active job count (highlighted) and queued job count
Idle	Shown when no jobs are active or queued
Unsaved	Number of open editor tabs with unsaved changes (highlighted)
Theme	Currently active colour preset name

The status bar updates automatically as the queue, plugins, documents, and theme change.

Settings

Settings — Application preferences opened via the gear icon in the toolbar, or via Tools → Settings (Ctrl+,) in the menu bar. Settings is a modal dialog, not a dockable panel. See Settings for a full reference.

Opening and closing panels

Most panels can be opened from the View menu in the menu bar, or from context actions in other panels (e.g. clicking a plugin opens its detail page; pressing F1 in the editor opens Endpoint Help). Some panels also have direct toolbar icons in the app toolbar.

Panels live in a drag-and-drop layout powered by GoldenLayout. Each panel appears as a tab in a pane; panes can be split horizontally or vertically and rearranged freely. Click the × on a tab to close it.

Open Choice saves the panel layout when you quit and restores it on next launch. You can also reassign each panel’s default region in Settings → Layout.

Panel focus

Click inside a panel to give it keyboard focus. The active panel tab is highlighted with the accent colour.