Navigating the workspace

Nuclei is fully keyboard-drivable. Everything the left rail and the panels can do is reachable from the command palette, and the views you visit most have direct shortcuts. Nothing here is mode-specific unless noted — the palette simply offers the commands that apply to the workspace mode you’re in.

Command palette

Press ⌘⇧P (Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux) to open the palette, then type to fuzzy-match. The palette is generated from the panel registry, so it can never drift from the rail: every view a mode offers has a Go to … command, and every visualization/bottom panel has a Toggle … command. A parity test enforces this.

What you’ll find:

• Go to <view> — open any rail view (Explorer, Experiments, Hardware, Resource Estimator, …). The first nine top-rail views also carry their ⌘1…⌘9 binding.
• Switch workspace mode (Learn/Research) — ⌘⇧M. Routes through the in-flight-work guard: a running sweep or campaign asks before switching; jobs never cancel.
• Toggle <panel> — show or hide a visualization/bottom panel (Circuit, Bloch, Histogram, Timeline, Code Lattice, Detector Graph, Terminal).
• Run experiment: <name> — start any discovered experiment by name (Research mode).
• Open run folder — reveal the selected run’s directory in your OS file manager (Research mode, when a run is selected).
• Replay the Research mode tour — re-run the orientation tour any time.

Keyboard shortcuts

⌘ is Command on macOS and Control on Windows/Linux. Existing bindings always win a collision — the navigation bindings below were added only on keys that were free.

Binding	Action
⌘⇧P	Open the command palette
⌘1…⌘9	Jump to the Nth top-rail view (mode-aware)
⌘⇧M	Switch workspace mode (Learn/Research)
⌘⇧L	Cycle UI mode (Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced)
⌘⇧T	Toggle theme
⌘`	Toggle the bottom panel (focuses Terminal)
⌘D	Toggle the Dirac panel
⌘L	Focus the Dirac input
⌘I	Inline compose (Cmd+K-style)
⌘↵	Run on the simulator
⌘⇧R	Open the hardware Launch modal
⌘O / ⌘S / ⌘⇧S / ⌘N	Open / Save / Save As / New file
⌘/	Keyboard shortcuts reference

Note

The ⌘1…⌘9 mapping follows the current mode’s top-rail order, so the same key lands on different views in Learn vs Research. Hover any rail icon to see its number in the tooltip.

The left rail

The rail’s contents are mode-specific and computed once from the panel registry — there are no per-view feature-flag conditionals scattered through the UI. Learn mode shows Learning, Challenges, and Community; Research mode shows Experiments, Hardware, the Resource Estimator, the Transpiler Explorer, and Plugins. Files, Launch, and Settings appear in both. Search and Circuit are developer-view tools, gated behind Settings → Advanced.

Selecting a rail view while a full-view surface (Learn Mode, Challenge Mode) is open leaves that surface first, so a keyboard jump always lands somewhere visible.