What do all these words mean?

Plain definitions of every word codus puts on screen, in the order that matters: the words codus invented, then the words that mean something different here than elsewhere, then ordinary developer words explained without assuming you have met them.

If you are looking one up, use your browser's find (Cmd+F).

Words codus invented

You will not find these anywhere else, and codus does not explain them on screen.

Quadrant

One of the panes in the main grid. Each quadrant holds one project folder, one AI agent working on it, and its own terminal. Four of them on screen means four projects being worked on at once, side by side, independently.

This is the single most important word in codus. Everything else hangs off it: tasks belong to a quadrant, the browser belongs to a quadrant, an agent belongs to a quadrant.

You will also see them written Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, or by position when there are exactly four: Top-left, Top-right, Bottom-left, Bottom-right.

Brain

A separate assistant in a drawer on the right-hand edge, opened from the brain icon in the title bar. Where an agent works inside one quadrant, the Brain works across all of them, and can hand work to individual quadrant agents.

You can have more than one open, named Brain 1, Brain 2 and so on.

Aux terminals

Three extra background terminals per quadrant, for running your project's servers alongside the agent. On screen they carry the names of what they run, by default npm run dev, npm run workers and freehand.

The agent gets the main terminal. These three are for everything else that has to be running at the same time.

Boot project

The recommended way to start work in a quadrant. Instead of just opening the agent, it tells the agent to look over your project and start its servers for you.

The alternative, start unbooted, opens the agent and leaves it waiting for instructions.

When you pick it, you will see an odd-looking line appear in the terminal. That is codus talking to the agent, not an error.

Pin

Attaching a project folder to a quadrant, so that quadrant works on that project. An empty quadrant invites you to pin a worktree. Once pinned, the folder's name sits in the quadrant header, with change folder… and unpin in its menu.

A folder can only be pinned to one quadrant at a time.

Status lights

The coloured dot on each tab, telling you what a quadrant needs without switching to it. Four states: Idle, Working, Needs input, Done.

The pulsing red Needs input is the one that matters. It means an agent has stopped and is waiting on you.

Picture-in-picture

Floating a quadrant's browser as a small window over its own pane, so you can watch a page while still typing to the agent underneath. Available per quadrant, or for all of them at once from the title bar.

Tabs

A tab in the title bar is a saved set of four quadrants. Adding one gives you four fresh quadrants, and each tab remembers its own layout.

These are not the browser tabs inside a preview, which are a different thing entirely.

Floor

The tab that appears with the Support pack, showing every live customer-support conversation at once alongside the agent handling each one. Think of it as a control room for support. It is not called "Support", which catches people out, see What are the modules?.

Live View

A card that mirrors whatever web page an agent currently has open, so you can watch it browse without touching anything. It shows in the Brain drawer and in some of the specialist views.

Touch up

The skin-smoothing slider in the codus screen recorder, named after the same feature in video-call apps. It softens skin on your face while you record and is baked into the finished edit, not the raw file. See How do I smooth my skin on camera?.

Words that mean something different in codus

These are the ones that catch people out, including experienced developers, because the word already means something else.

Module

This word does two unrelated jobs.

On the team page, a module is a paid pack you add to someone's seat, such as SEO or Video. Buying one is what makes its tab appear in their copy of codus.

Inside the desktop app, on a plan canvas, a module is a shape you can file a note or a task under. Nothing to do with money.

Context tells you which. If it is about billing or tabs appearing, it is the first. If it is about a canvas, it is the second.

Plan

Also two jobs.

In the cloud, your plan is what you pay for: Solo, Agency 5, Agency 10, Agency 20+.

In the desktop app, a plan is a document about the work: a canvas of shapes and connections, or a list of tasks or notes. There are three kinds, canvas, tasks and notes, and only canvas plans have the shapes that a note or task can be assigned to.

Worktree

In codus, pin a worktree just means "choose the folder this quadrant works on". Any folder will do.

In git, the wider tool codus sits on top of, a worktree is a specific, narrower thing: an extra copy of one project checked out somewhere else. Both meanings appear in the app, occasionally close together. If you are reading a button, assume the loose meaning: a folder.

Token

In codus, a token is a password-like string you paste in to connect an outside service, such as a Vercel or Cloudflare token.

It does not mean the unit of text an AI model reads and writes, which is what the word usually means around AI tools. codus does not show you a count of those anywhere. Agent usage appears instead as a percentage of a time window, with a 5-hour bar and a weekly bar.

Actions

In the Changes panel's tab row, Actions means GitHub Actions, your project's automated build jobs.

Elsewhere, the work your agent has completed is also described as actions. Same word, unrelated things.

Done

The tab holding the running record of everything your agent has finished, one line per piece of work. If you are looking for a history, log or journal, this is it. It is called done.

Ordinary developer words, in plain English

Nothing codus-specific here, but no one is born knowing them.

Agent

The AI that does the work in a quadrant. codus does not have an AI of its own: it runs one you already have, either Claude Code or OpenAI Codex, and gives it a place to work, tools to use, and a record of what it did.

This is why codus asks you to install and sign in to Claude Code separately before it is useful.

Terminal

The large text panel that fills most of a quadrant. It is where you talk to the agent and where the agent replies. You type at the bottom.

Repo, or repository

Your project folder, tracked by git so every change is recorded and reversible.

You do not need one. codus is happy to open any folder. If the folder is not a repo, the panel that shows your changes simply says so.

Branch

A named line of work inside a project, so you can change things without disturbing the version that already works. It shows as a chip beside the folder name in the quadrant header, and clicking it lets you switch, create, rename or delete.

Seat

One person's place on your subscription. See What is a seat?.

Task

A job you queue for a quadrant's agent, written in the tasks tab and run from there. A task moves through proposed, pending, running, and then done or cancelled, and can hold smaller subtasks.

Note

A short piece of writing saved against a project so it survives between sessions. The first line becomes its title. Each one is tagged as a note, idea, decision, question, todo or brainstorming.

Issue

A problem raised out of a customer-support conversation, queued against a quadrant so its agent can fix it. This is not a GitHub issue and not a general bug tracker. It only appears if your plan includes the Support pack.

Preview

The web browser built into codus, showing your site beside the terminal so you can watch changes as they happen.

Its name is not consistent yet: the button that opens it says web, its tooltip says test browser, and the tab strip calls it a preview. All the same thing.

Dev server

The program that serves your site on your own machine so the preview has something to show. Until it is running, the preview has nothing to display.

MCP

The section in Settings where you add extra tools for your agents to use. The three letters are never spelled out anywhere, and you do not need them: the section's own description is the useful definition, "give your agents extra tools".

PATH

A list your computer keeps of where to find the programs it can run. When setup tells you to put something "on your PATH", it means making your machine able to find it by name.

This is the step people most often miss when installing Claude Code, and the symptom is codus telling you Claude Code is not installed when you know that you installed it.

DevTools

The inspection panel for a quadrant, titled DevTools with the quadrant's name. Five sections: Changes (files you have edited but not yet saved into git history), Explorer, History, PRs, Actions.

Pull request, or PR

A proposal to merge one branch into another, reviewed before it is accepted. Managed from the PRs panel, which needs your GitHub account connected first.

A note on what you can see

Not everything described here appears for everyone. Some areas of codus are separate paid packs, and an area your plan does not include does not appear at all, rather than appearing greyed out. If something in this glossary is nowhere on your screen, that is usually why.