The app window

codeflower client (also: code flower in the applications or Start menu) opens the app’s page in your browser. It runs on your computer and is served only to it, at http://127.0.0.1:7720/ (or a free port when that one is taken). Started again while it runs, it opens the running one.

Sandboxes here and elsewhere

• Server shows this computer: which container engines are ready, the sandbox image, the start form, and remote access. See the quickstart.
• Add remote sandbox (in the sidebar) connects to a sandbox running elsewhere, e.g. a cluster job, by the codeflower:// line it printed. The app remembers it, and relays the connection so the token never reaches the browser. A sandbox’s own link (http://127.0.0.1:7720/#add=…) does the same in one click.
• Choosing a sandbox shows its chats, New chat, Sign in…, and Open in VS Code instead. Manage it (rename, change its address or token, remove it) from its menu.

With --connect-only (or client.connect_only: true in config.yaml) the app never starts sandboxes, e.g. on a cluster’s login node.

The page

• The sidebar folds to a rail with Ctrl/⌘+B and can be resized.
• Chats, folders and files open in tabs, in groups you can split and drag, like an editor. The layout is remembered.
• Files under a sandbox browses its folders, where you upload and download. See Files and previews.
• A chat that finished or waits for you while you look elsewhere is marked in the sidebar, and a note at the top of the page opens it.
• Opened through the tunnel with several paired computers, the sidebar lists the sandboxes under a heading per computer, and Server has a switch on top for the computer it shows.

Tray and notifications

Where the desktop has a tray (Windows, the macOS menu bar, Linux desktops with StatusNotifierItem, e.g. KDE, or GNOME with the AppIndicator extension), the app shows an icon that opens the page and quits. When a chat asks a question, wants a permission, or ends its turn, the app tells the desktop. Turn them off with --no-tray and --no-notifications, or client.tray and client.notifications.

Quitting

Quitting (Ctrl+C, the page, or the tray) asks first when sandboxes are running:

• Wrap up and quit: chats that are working in the sandboxes started here are asked to save their work and stop, at most for 10 minutes (client.wrap_up_minutes), then the sandboxes stop.
• Quit now stops them at once (as does a second Ctrl+C).
• Keep running cancels.

Sandboxes started elsewhere keep running.

On a remote machine

On a machine you reach over SSH, run the app there and forward its port:

ssh -L 7720:127.0.0.1:7720 login.cluster.example
codeflower client --no-browser   # prints the page's address to open on your computer

Over SSH, the app shows no tray icon or notifications.

Running in the background

When this computer is signed in to remote access, codeflower run, interactive and tunnel pair start the app in the background if it is not running, so paired phones and browsers can reach their sandboxes. Open it with codeflower client; it quits when you quit it there or sign out of the tunnel.