Web dashboard guide

The dashboard is the browser surface the daemon serves at http://127.0.0.1:12358/va/ (the root path redirects there) — a terminal, a chat, live previews, and runtime management in one SPA. Locally it opens pre-authenticated from the desktop app; remotely it works through a tunnel with pairing (Tunnels and remote access).

Web Chat

A full agent conversation in the browser, sharing the same thread model as IM chats:

• Launch selection. Pick agent, workspace (or a cwd), and model profile per conversation; start fresh or resume a native CLI session from the session picker.
• Streaming turns with tool-call progress, a stop button, and permission cards rendered inline.
• Slash commands from the IM command reference work here too (/status, /new, /switch codex…).
• Modes and options. Agents that expose session modes (e.g. permission modes) or config options show them as chat controls.
• Idle behavior. Web threads unload their agent after inactivity like any thread; reopening the chat replays recent output and resumes transparently.
• Handover. A web conversation can be picked up from IM (/pickup) or continued on a phone via the mobile dashboard.

Web Terminal

A real terminal (xterm.js) attached to a PTY on your machine:

• Sessions are created per tool — a shell or directly into an agent CLI (va session create --tool claude --attach does the same from a terminal).
• Multiple tabs; sessions persist while the daemon runs and can be re-attached after closing the browser (va sessions lists them).
• tmux integration (optional): attach to existing tmux sessions from the dashboard; tmux_detach_others in settings controls whether attaching kicks other clients.
• Desktop-app-only agents (claude-desktop, codex-desktop) cannot run here — they have no CLI.

Live Preview

Share what is running on your machine without deploying:

• Dev server previews. Register a local port and get a preview page that reverse-proxies it, with an iframe toolbar. Agents create these automatically when they start dev servers (via the va-preview skill / MCP preview tool — tool reference).
• Markdown preview. Any markdown file rendered GitHub-style (md_preview tool or the va-md-preview skill).
• Two links per preview: the owner URL (token-authenticated, lives as long as the preview) and a share URL that expires after 10 minutes and needs no auth — safe to paste in a group chat. See Security model.
• va previews / va preview delete <slug> manage them from the CLI; preview processes started for you are killed when the daemon stops.

Runtime management

Dashboard panels mirror what va status reports — channel plugin states (with restart controls), tunnel status, active agent runtimes, PTY sessions, workspaces, and model profiles. Anything you can do there also has a CLI verb (Reference).

Mobile

The dashboard is responsive; the chat surface includes mobile command controls so thread commands are tappable. Pair once (a 60-second code confirmed from a trusted surface), then a tunneled dashboard on a phone behaves like the desktop one.

Source anchors: src/server/src/web_server/ (ws_chat, ws_pty, preview/), src/web/src/ (SPA), src/core/src/pty/ (sessions), src/core/src/previews/ (owner/share, TTL), src/skills/va-preview/, src/skills/va-md-preview/. Last verified: v0.7.11