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Control Tower UI reference

Every user-facing action in the NodalMerge Studio VS Code extension, organized by panel — the practical “what can I click” companion to How Studio works and to Reference → API surface’s backend catalog.

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Command palette

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Goal Workspace

The primary surface: create goals, watch the Decision Tree, inspect any node in the Decision Lens.

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Topbar

• Active Exploration — pick which session’s decision tree to view
• Exploration Strategy — Multi-Agent Fanout (or another topology template) for a normal run, or one of four experiment strategies: Multi-Model Comparison, Architecture Fork, Library Comparison, Product Strategy Fork
• Goal — the goal text
• ▶ Run — launches the goal under the selected strategy, review policy, and target
• ⚙ Settings — toggles the Exploration Settings panel below

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Review / Target row (always visible under the topbar)

• Review: Human Required / Agent Approval / Hybrid (5 min) — sets this goal’s review policy
• Target: Candidate Branch / Direct — only shown when promotion branches are enabled session-wide; overrides the session default per goal

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Exploration Settings panel (⚙)

• Auto-select agent profiles by capability (checkbox)
• Max concurrent workers (number)
• Scheduler poll interval, ms (number)
• Require build before proposal / Require tests before proposal (checkboxes — server-side policy gate, not a manual trigger)

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Fork config panel (appears for any of the 4 experiment strategies)

Per fork: a Profile dropdown and an optional Constraint text field (e.g. “use gRPC instead of REST” for an Architecture Fork). + Add Fork adds another entry. Multi-Model Comparison picks 2 orchestrator profiles automatically and ignores the constraint field; the other three require every fork to have a constraint (the backend rejects the request otherwise).

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Decision Tree (left column)

• Click a node to select it (loads its timeline + Decision Lens)
• Right-click → Fork Hypothesis, Re-explore, Fork from latest candidate, Fork from Known Good
• A parent with 2+ forks shows an N forks badge + Compare Results link
• A counterfactual node shows a Counterfactual badge + Compare with Original link

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Reasoning & Execution Timeline (middle column)

Click any artifact or event to load it into the Decision Lens.

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Decision Lens (right column) — two tabs

Metadata tab:

• Fork Hypothesis / Re-explore / Fork from latest candidate / Fork from Known Good — same actions as the tree’s context menu. Fork from Known Good lists the node’s branch’s marked checkpoints, then a goal and profile, then forks a new work unit seeded from that checkpoint’s content.
• ↺ Run with different model (completed/merged nodes) — creates a counterfactual: re-runs this node’s latest proposal under a different profile
• ⏸ Pause & Redirect (running nodes) — pauses the agent, prompts for a constraint, forks a sibling that resumes with it
• ↳ Fork from here (running nodes) — forks a sibling from this node’s current state with a new goal + optional constraint

Context tab:

• Loads the goal, plan, assumptions, constraints, evidence, execution results, allowed tools, and model for this node — the structured decision audit, never raw prompt text
• 📋 Copy as Markdown — copies the above to clipboard
• Constraints proposed by domain observers appear in the Artifacts chain here, identifiable by their title prefix (e.g., [SecurityAgent] Missing rate-limit on /api/auth). See Guides → Domain observers.

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Compare Results view (experiments)

• Click a fork card to select it
• Pick Winner — approves the selected fork’s latest proposal and rejects every other fork’s latest proposal
• Reset — clears the selection
• 📋 View proposals — opens the fork’s proposals

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Compare with Original view (counterfactuals)

Side-by-side original vs. counterfactual: model/provider, status, confidence, files touched, diff summary for each, plus a “which was better” line when set.

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Activity Center

Secondary surface for direct work-unit/agent lifecycle management without going through the Goal Workspace’s Decision Tree.

• Session override — filter this panel to one session
• + New Goal — create a work unit via sequential prompts: goal → owner → review policy → (if promotion branches are on) target (Candidate / Direct)
• Active Goals: Spawn (start an agent) · View Conflict → (when Reviewing)
• Running Agents: + Start Agent · Pause · Resume · ↺ Resume (for Interrupted agents after a host restart) · Stop. Agents spawned by a connected headless peer appear in this list alongside interactively spawned agents and can be paused, resumed, or stopped from here — see Guides → Headless peer.
• Pending Decisions: Review Decision →
• Blocked Explorations (dead-letter queue): Retry (when attempts remain)

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Model & Agent Studio

Configuration surface — profiles, templates, and session-wide defaults.

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Profiles tab

Table of agent profiles with Edit / Delete per row, + Add Profile. The form: ID, label, domain, LLM provider (VS Code LM / OpenAI-compatible / Anthropic), model (with ↑ Refresh to fetch live model list), base URL + API key (hidden for VS Code LM), system prompt hint. Save Profiles persists everything.

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Exploration Strategies tab

Topology templates (orchestrator + worker assignments): Set Default, Edit, Delete, + Add Exploration Strategy. Save Strategies persists.

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Quick Explore tab

One-off run: strategy, goal, “run automated review before human gate” checkbox, ▶ Quick Explore.

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Pipeline Profiles tab

Stage-specific agent behavior (Orchestrate/Plan/Execute/Review/Merge): allowed tools, file-scope patterns, max iterations, system prompt. Edit / + Add Pipeline Profile.

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Session Defaults tab

• Default Review Policy dropdown
• Use candidate branch checkbox (session-wide promotion branch toggle)
• ↑ Promote to Main — applies candidate → main; enabled only when the toggle above is on
• Save Session Defaults

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Decision Convergence

The merge-review gate. Two modes depending on the proposal/work-unit state.

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Proposal review mode

• Status badge, source/target branch, confidence, goal, summary, rationale
• Code Changes: Inline / Split diff toggle, per-file expand, Open Diff in Editor
• Evidence: build/test results, download full output when truncated
• Converged Decision section (if synthesized from multiple candidates): constituent proposal cards
• Validate Evidence · Accept Decision · Reject Decision · Apply Decision · Fork Hypothesis · Restore workspace (read-only pre-change files)

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Conflict resolution mode

Shows the conflict report; resolution itself happens by editing the conflicting branches outside the panel, then re-running the merger.

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Pathways / Trajectory Replay

DAG visualization and historical scrubbing.

• Replay Mode: Linear / Branch Explorer / Counterfactual
• DAG canvas: click/hover a node for details
• Scrubber: slide through the branch’s timeline (position shown as N / Total)
• Playback bar: ▶ Live (jump to latest) · ⎇ Branch from here (new work unit seeded from the scrubbed branch’s current content) · 📌 Mark Known Good (label
  • save checkpoint) · ↩ Restore Known Good (pick a marked checkpoint for this branch and restore the branch’s files to that point in place)

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Summary