Find your way around

Hydrant has one sidebar, one top bar and one search box that goes everywhere. Learn those three and you can stop hunting for buttons.

Before you start

• A workspace. See Get started.
• Some of what’s below only shows up when you have access to it. Members see fewer settings than Admins, and that’s on purpose. Who can do what.

Steps

The sidebar

Top to bottom:

Part	What it does
Workspace switcher	The workspace name at the top. Type a name in Switch to and press Enter, or pick from Pinned, Recent and More. The footer has All workspaces and + (New workspace). Admins and the Owner get a settings button on the current workspace’s row. On All workspaces, with no workspace open, the rail lists your pins under Pinned.
Favorites	Views you starred. New workspaces start with Cockpit and Control tower. The first five show; Show all favorites reveals the rest.
Sign-off	What waits on your word: issues in review, and approvals on environments you approve. The number is how many. Its New and Your notes tabs show what was written or refined since you last looked, and answers to your comments. See Sign-off.
Issues	The built-in views: Cockpit, Control tower, Refinery and Lost and found, which shows up when something’s fallen through the cracks (or always, with sidebar counts off). The Back room holds Backlog, All issues, Cold storage and Trash. It stays folded until you open it or land on one of them. Saved views appears once any exist.
Projects, Roadmap, Cycles, Insights, Playbook	The planning and agent pages.
Connect an agent, then Teach your agent	Connect an agent shows while the workspace has no agent connected. Once one is, the same spot offers the workflow pack, because connected isn’t the same as useful. Dismiss either with its ×; each stays gone on its own. In a workspace you just created or joined, the Cockpit checklist takes the Connect an agent spot until you hide or finish the checklist.
Workspace settings	Opens Settings for this workspace. The Settings map covers every section.
Help & feedback	Help (this site), Watch the walkthrough, Send feedback, Service status and Hydrant on X, where we post what shipped. The last line is the version you’re running, like Hydrant v2026.09.26.8. Choose it to copy the version for a bug report.
Account menu	Your name at the bottom. Preferences and Sign out.

Every view has a ⋯ menu with a one-line reminder of what it holds, Add to favorites or Remove from favorites, and, in Favorites, Move up and Move down. You can also drag a favorite to a new place, press Alt plus ↑ or ↓ on it, or, on a phone, hold it, then drag. While Favorites shows only its first five, a drag moves among the rows you can see. What each view contains is in Views, filters and saved views.

In the workspace switcher, a row’s pin button pins it to the top. Drag pinned rows to reorder them, drag any row into Pinned to pin it there, or drag one out to unpin it. With the keyboard, Alt plus ↑ or ↓ moves a pinned row; on a phone, hold a row, then drag. Pins and Recent stay in this browser. Switching workspaces takes you back to wherever you last were in that one.

On a narrow screen the sidebar tucks away. Open navigation at the top left brings it back, and Esc closes it.

Activity, just above Workspace settings, shows how busy this workspace is: Last hour, Today (since midnight in the workspace’s timezone) and 7 days, each with its count, a small chart and a thin bar splitting people’s work from agents’. Beside the heading is how the last hour compares with a normal one: Dry, Trickle, Steady, Surging or Burst pipe. Hover over a row or focus it to see who did the work, each person with their agents, and choose it to open Pressure. On a touch screen the first tap shows who; Open Pressure goes on from there. Add 30 days, drop rows or turn the whole block off with Activity in the sidebar in Preferences; off means nothing is fetched.

The top bar

• The page name. On an issue list it’s the view’s name, with About this view beside built-in views for the longer explanation.
• The activity ticker. One line of what teammates and agents just did in this workspace: who, what and which issue, with how long ago. Your own work from the browser stays out; your agents’ work shows. When something new happens, its line slides in from the right, crosses once and settles. Nothing moves when nothing is new. Hover over it, focus it or press Pause ticker to hold it still; choose the line to open what it’s about. Latest activity (the clock) lists the last 20 lines. The ticker steps aside when the top bar is too crowded, and on a phone it lives at the top of the navigation instead, as Latest activity. With reduced motion on, new lines simply replace the old one. To hide it everywhere, turn off Activity ticker in Preferences.
• The activity dot. On a phone, the coloured dot at the start of the actions stands in for the sidebar’s Activity block: its name reads out how busy the workspace is and every row’s count, and it opens Pressure.
• Find it. The command palette. More below.
• Quick capture. The orange button. It’s in the same spot on every workspace page, Settings included. So is its shortcut, c.
• The bell. Your notifications for this workspace, with an unread count.

Find it

Press Find it. in the top bar, or ⌘K on a Mac and Ctrl+K elsewhere. The button shows whichever one your computer uses.

1. Start typing. Hydrant searches:
   • issue titles and #numbers
   • pages: every built-in view, Roadmap, Cycles, Insights, Projects, Saved views, Notifications and Playbook
   • the settings sections you’re allowed to open, listed as Settings → Members and so on
   • saved views and projects
   • your other workspaces, by name or description
   • milestones, by name, with their project beside them
2. Pages that match what you typed come first, then your other workspaces, then issues. Typing “agents” and pressing Enter lands on Settings → Agents, not on the first issue that mentions agents. Typing a workspace’s name and pressing Enter switches to it, the same as picking it in the workspace switcher. Pinned workspaces come first.
3. Milestones come after projects. Choosing one opens its project at that milestone. Archived milestones, and milestones of archived projects, stay out.
4. Use ↑ and ↓ to pick, Enter to go, Esc to bail.

With nothing typed, it shows the issues you opened recently, Create issue, a short list of pages, your saved views and your projects.

When there are more matching issues than fit, See all N matches opens a full search results list, sorted by relevance.

Give orders

Start with > to hide issue results and see only places and commands:

• Create issue
• Switch workspace, which turns the palette into a workspace picker. Your other workspaces don’t show up as rows here; type without > to find them.
• every page and allowed settings section, plus your projects and their milestones
• with an issue open: change its status, assignee, priority, size or snooze; copy its link; copy its number; and copy the agent prompt for its stage (Copy an agent prompt)

Size shows up only when the workspace uses sizes. Snooze shows up only when snoozing is available.

Keyboard shortcuts

The single-letter keys (c, f and x) stand down while you’re typing in a field or have a menu or dialog open. On Windows and Linux, read ⌘ as Ctrl.

Where	Keys	Does
Anywhere in a workspace	⌘K	Open Find it
Anywhere in a workspace	c	Quick capture
Issue list	f	Open Filter
Issue list	↑ ↓ Home End	Move between issues
Issue list	Shift+F10 or the Menu key	Open the focused issue’s actions menu, or the selection’s menu when that issue is one of several selected
Issue list	x, Shift+x	Select the focused issue, or every issue from the last one you picked (Change several issues at once)
Issue list	⌘A, Esc	Select every loaded issue in the list, clear the selection
Board	↑ ↓ Home End, ← →	Move within a column, or to the nearest card in the next column. The issue list’s other keys work on cards too. On a phone, ← → switch columns.
Sign-off	↑ ↓ Home End, Space, Enter	Move between rows, tick the row, open it
Find it	↑ ↓, Enter, Esc	Pick, go, close. Esc in the workspace picker goes back.
New issue	⌘Enter	Create the issue
Open issue	Esc	Stop editing, or close the issue if you weren’t
Open issue	Enter on the description	Start editing it
Issue title	Enter	Save the title
Comment box	⌘Enter	Post the comment
Editor	⌘B ⌘I ⌘U	Bold, italic, underline
Editor	⌘E	Inline code
Editor	⌘K	Insert a link
Editor	⌘Shift+S	Strikethrough
Editor	⌘Shift+7 ⌘Shift+8 ⌘Shift+9	Checklist, bullet list, numbered list
Editor	⌘Shift+\	Code block
Editor, in a checklist item	⌘Enter	Tick or untick it. Add Shift to include the items nested under it.
Editor	@	Link an issue, person or agent, or type @today, @tomorrow or a date like @2026-10-01
Editor	:	Emoji, by name
Dependency graph node	Enter, Shift+Enter	Select it, center the graph on it
Dependency drawing	arrows, + -, 0, F	Pan, zoom, fit, return to the focused issue
Mobile navigation	Esc	Close it

⌘K does two jobs: in the editor it inserts a link, everywhere else it opens Find it.

Readable addresses

Every address in Hydrant can be shared and bookmarked.

• A workspace lives at its name plus a 10-character code: hydrant.dev/side-project-k2m4p7q3xa. Only the code matters, so renaming the workspace doesn’t break old links.
• Issues use their number: …/side-project-k2m4p7q3xa/issues/42.
• Views and filters ride along in the address, so a copied link shows your teammate the same list, as far as their access allows.

Older links built on long IDs still work. Hydrant swaps them for the readable version when they open.

What you should see

The page you asked for, reached without opening a single menu. The sidebar marks where you are, and Back does what you’d expect.

If it goes sideways

• c or f does nothing. You’re typing somewhere, or a menu or dialog has focus. Click an empty part of the page and try again. f only works on issue lists.
• ⌘K does nothing. Same idea: you’re typing in a field, or a dialog, menu or list has focus. Click outside it or close it first.
• “No matches. We’re good. We’re not psychic.” Try fewer words, an issue number, or > if you were looking for a command.
• A settings section is missing from Find it. You can’t open it with your role, so Hydrant doesn’t offer it. Who can do what.
• “Workspace unavailable. The door’s shut.” You lost access to the workspace, or the connection dropped. Press Try the door again, or switch workspace. Typing another workspace’s name still finds it.
• “That shortcut hit a wall.” The control on the open issue wasn’t available, usually because it’s saving or in Trash. Use the controls on the issue directly.