The Visual Canvas
The canvas is SenateLab's main interaction surface. Every agent has a position, every task has a trail, and every message leaves a visible line. The layout is designed to make the team's state readable at a glance, not hidden behind tabs.
Moving around
- Pan: hold Space and drag, or middle-click drag.
- Zoom: pinch on a trackpad, or hold ⌘ and scroll.
- Center on everything: press ⌘ 0.
- Fit to a selection: select one or more agents and press ⌘ 9.
Agent nodes
Each agent renders as a hex node with three signals: the ring colour is status, the small number near the node is active tasks, and the sticky note (if any) is the agent's one-line intent. Hover to see a tooltip with role, owner, and a timestamp of the last activity.
Selection & interaction
- Click to select an agent and open its detail panel.
- Shift-click to multi-select.
- Drag to reposition.
- Right-click for the context menu — run, pause, duplicate, delete, open in new window.
Creating agents & teams
Press the + button on the canvas or ⌘ ⇧ A to spawn a new agent. To group two agents into a team, drag one onto the other — a team frame wraps them both. Keep dragging others in and the frame resizes to fit. Drag a node outside the frame to remove it.
Seeing communication
When two agents pass a message, a faint line animates between them and fades. You can freeze these trails with ⌘ . to inspect a specific conversation. Clicking a frozen line opens the exchange in the chat panel.
Shortcuts
The most frequent canvas shortcuts — there is a full reference in Keyboard Shortcuts.
- ⌘ N — new map
- ⌘ ⇧ A — new agent
- ⌘ K — command palette
- Space + drag — pan
- ⌘ 0 — fit