Tips & Tricks

Input editing

• Multi-line input: press Alt+Enter to insert a newline without submitting. Useful for writing code snippets or structured prompts.
• Undo/redo: Ctrl+Z undoes the last edit. Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes. Edits within a 500ms window coalesce into one undo entry.
• History search: Ctrl+R searches backward through input history. Ctrl+S searches forward. Type to filter, Enter to insert.
• Word navigation: Alt+Left / Alt+Right jump word boundaries. Alt+Backspace deletes a word backward.
• Line editing: Ctrl+A / Ctrl+E jump to start / end. Ctrl+K kills to end of line. Ctrl+U clears everything.

Chat interaction

• Copy text: Ctrl+Shift+C copies selected text to the clipboard. Click and drag to select (when mouse capture is on, toggle with /mouse).
• Scroll: mouse wheel, PageUp/PageDown (10 lines), or click the scrollbar. Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End jump to top / bottom. Ctrl+L re-attaches auto-scroll to the bottom.
• Cancel streaming: press Esc twice. The first Esc shows a hint in the status bar (“esc again to stop agent”). The second cancels immediately.
• Toggle reasoning: Ctrl+T expands/collapses reasoning/thinking blocks. Ctrl+O expands/collapses bash output.

Session management

• History: /sessions lists previous sessions with timestamps. /resume <id> resumes one. See Sessions.
• Rewind: /rewind <n> truncates to the first N messages. Use /rewind with no args to see a list with snippets.
• Clear: /clear wipes the conversation context (persists to disk). /compact forces context compaction on the next turn.

Clearing preserves permission grants. If you approved a tool for the session, that approval survives /clear.

Model switching

• Quick switch: /model deepseek-v4-flash switches without leaving the keyboard. /model alone opens the picker.
• Thinking variants: /thinking high sets the reasoning effort. /thinking off disables it. Or use Ctrl+P and select “Thinking Variant”, then press Ctrl+P repeatedly to cycle through options.
• Cost tracking: /cost shows accumulated token counts and estimated cost for the session.

@-mentions

• Type @ in the input to open the file picker. Selecting a file inserts an @path mention that gets resolved and added to the agent’s context before the prompt is sent.
• @ followed by a subagent name (shown with [subagent] tag) inserts a subagent reference instead of a file path.

Terminal title

When streaming, the terminal tab title shows mew - thinking.... When idle, it shows mew. This helps you tell when a response is done from another tab. Logs are redirected to /tmp/mew-<pid>.log so they don’t corrupt the TUI display.

Prompting patterns

Be specific about scope

The agent has filesystem access and tools. Tell it what to focus on:

Fix the off-by-one in the pagination logic in src/api/list.rs.
Don't touch the database layer.

Ask for investigation first

For unfamiliar code, ask the agent to investigate before making changes:

Find where the session timeout is configured and explain how it works.
Don't change anything yet.

Use subagents for heavy research

If a task involves scanning many files, delegate it so the results don’t fill your main context:

Use the researcher subagent to find all places we construct SQL queries
and report back which ones use parameterized queries.

See Subagents for the built-in options.

Break work into phases

Use the planner/builder workflow for complex tasks:

1. /persona planner to investigate and write a plan
2. Review the plan in PLAN.md
3. /persona builder to execute it

See Personas for details.

Permission workflow

If you’re doing repetitive work that needs many tool approvals:

1. Start in standard mode to review each tool call.
2. Once you trust the pattern, switch to permissive with /permissions permissive to auto-allow writes and edits.
3. For full automation, use /permissions auto to let the classifier decide each call.

Switch back to standard when you’re done:

/permissions standard

See Permissions for the full mode reference.