---
title: What's inside a quadrant?
question: anatomy of a quadrant
area: quadrants
surface: desktop
audience: beginner
keywords: [anatomy of a quadrant, parts of a quadrant, what's inside a quadrant, terminal, agent terminal, aux terminals, auxiliary terminals, dev workers freehand, freehand terminal, npm run dev, start commands, web button, preview button, side panel, sidebar, tasks notes done, devtools, inspector, panes, panels, layout]
related: [what-is-a-quadrant, the-built-in-browser, the-devtools-panel]
updated: 2026-07-21
---

# What's inside a quadrant?

A quadrant is one project's workspace, and everything for that project sits in it. Filling most of it is the **main terminal**, where the coding agent (Claude or Codex) runs and you type to it. Along the top sit a small **terminals** icon that opens three background terminals for running your project, and a **web** button that opens a preview browser. Beside the terminal is a **side panel** with **tasks**, **done**, and **notes** tabs. Each part has its own page below.

## The parts

- **Main terminal:** the big panel where you talk to the agent. Press Enter to send, Shift+Enter for a new line, and answer its menus with the arrow keys and Enter, not the mouse. See [the main terminal](whats-inside-a-quadrant.md).
- **Background terminals:** the small **terminals** icon in the header opens three, side by side: **npm run dev** (your dev server), **npm run workers** (a queue or scheduler), and **freehand** (a plain shell for one-off commands you type yourself). The first two have **▶ start** and **◼ stop** buttons, and the icon turns green while one runs. If your project does not start with npm, [change what start runs](whats-inside-a-quadrant.md). See [the background terminals](whats-inside-a-quadrant.md).
- **web:** the globe button opens a built-in preview browser in the slot next to the quadrant, so you can watch the app the agent is building. See [the web button](the-built-in-browser.md).
- **DevTools:** with the preview open, its **</>** button (or Cmd+Option+I) opens the full Chrome inspector next to the page. See [DevTools](the-devtools-panel.md).
- **Side panel:** the tabs beside the terminal are **tasks** (work you queue for the agent), **done** (a log the agent adds to as it finishes things), and **notes** (things you want to keep). It opens on **done**, and unlike the terminal your mouse works here. See [tasks](whats-inside-a-quadrant.md), [done](whats-inside-a-quadrant.md), and [notes](whats-inside-a-quadrant.md).