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How to use the focus stack

Problem

You want one ordered queue of the work in flight, with the task you are on right now at the top, so you always know what comes next.

Prerequisites

  • A running API and the web app open (see the tutorial).

Steps

  1. Open the Stack page (the /stack route). Every task that is open, in progress, or blocked is on the stack automatically. You never add work by hand.
  2. Use the keyboard to drive the queue:
Key Action
Enter Add a new task to the top, making it current.
Shift+Enter Insert a new task right after the current one.
Up / Down Move the selection.
Left / Right Move the selected task up or down one position.
Home (or /) Promote the selected task to current.
Delete Remove the selected task from the stack (the task is kept).
0-9 Select a task by position.
Esc Clear the selection and the filter.
  1. Drag a row, or its handle, to reorder the list. The list reorders live and the move saves when you release.
  2. Click a row to select it. The status icon opens a picker, so you can set a task to Done to complete it; it then leaves the stack.
  3. Open History to see removed and completed entries.

Each row shows its status, how many times it has become current, when it started, when it was last current, and the total time it has been current.

Optional: the tray companion

The agentic-stack launcher adds a tray icon showing the current task and a global hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+T) that opens the stack page from anywhere.

uv run agentic-stack

On macOS the first run asks for Accessibility and Input Monitoring.

Verification

The task you promote is at position 0 and is marked current, and History lists the entries you removed.

  • CLI reference for agentic stack push, pop, promote, reorder, and history.