Projects and threads

Projects

A project is a folder on your disk. Add one with ⇧⌘O, the folder button in the sidebar, or File → Add Project…. Projects are listed alphabetically, with pinned projects first.

Right-click a project (or use its ⋯ button) to:

New thread: start a thread in the project.
Rename and appearance…: change the name, give it an emoji, pick an accent color, or put it in a space (see below).
Pin / Unpin: keep the project at the top.
Reveal in Finder and Copy path.
Change folder…: point the project at a different folder (for example after you moved it). Its threads stay with it. This isn't possible while one of its threads is running.
Remove project: removes it from Elyra. Your files are not touched.

Click the arrow next to a project to collapse it. Elyra remembers which projects you collapsed.

Project spaces

Spaces group projects, for example Work and Personal. Set a project's space in Rename and appearance…. Once at least one project has a space, chips appear at the top of the sidebar: All and one per space. Pick one to see only those projects. Elyra remembers your choice.

Chats without a project

⌥⌘N (or the speech-bubble button) starts a thread in a scratch folder, ~/.elyra/chats, listed as the project Chats. Use it for questions that don't belong to a codebase.

Threads

Each thread is one task with its own conversation and agent session. The sidebar shows:

Pinned threads at the top.
Under each project, its active threads. Threads you marked as done are hidden behind Show N done.
A status icon: working (spinner), needs your approval or input, failed, interrupted. A dot marks a thread with a reply you haven't seen yet.
How long ago the thread was last active.

The Dock badge counts threads that need you or have unread replies.

Thread menu

Right-click a thread (or use its ⋯ button):

Item	What it does
Rename…	Give the thread a title.
Generate title	Let the agent write a short title from the conversation.
Pin / Unpin	Show it in the Pinned section.
Mark as done	Hide it under Show N done. If it was open, Elyra moves on to the next unfinished thread.
Mark as unread	Show the unread dot again.
Fork	Copy the thread into a new one that continues separately (see below).
Continue with ▸	Start the same task with another provider (see Handoff).
Export…	Save the thread as a ZIP file.
Open terminal here	Open the thread's terminal.
Copy path, Copy thread ID	Copy the working folder or the thread's id.
Archive	Remove it from the sidebar; it can be restored.
Delete…	Delete it for good. If it has its own worktree, you can choose to remove the worktree too.

Archived threads are listed under Archived (N) at the bottom of the sidebar. From there you can restore or delete them.

New threads get a title from your first message. A running agent is not stopped when you switch threads.

Tabs and navigation

Open threads are tabs above the conversation. Elyra restores them at the next launch.

Shortcut	Action
⌘1 … ⌘8	Go to that tab
⌘9	Go to the last tab
⇧⌘] / ⇧⌘[	Next / previous tab
⌃Tab	The thread you used most recently before this one
⌘[ / ⌘]	Back / forward through the threads you visited
⌘W	Close the tab (the thread keeps running)

Split chat

⌘\ shows a second thread next to the active one: the one you used most recently, or else another open tab. Use the arrows button in its header to swap the two, and the × to close the split. Clicking a thread in the sidebar shows it on the left.

Side chats

A side chat (⌥⌘S) is a quick conversation that branches from the current thread. Use it to ask about something without derailing the main thread. It starts with the same agent, model and folder. For Claude Code, Codex, Elyra and Pi it also starts from the main thread's conversation so far.

The side chat opens in the Side chat tab of the tools panel. It is not listed in the sidebar. Its header has buttons to:

+ start another side chat
Open as a thread: turn it into an ordinary thread with its own tab
Discard it

Side chats clean themselves up. At startup, Elyra removes side chats that were never used, whose parent thread is gone, or that have been idle for a week.

Fork

Fork (⇧⌘K, or the thread menu) copies a thread into a new one, including the conversation. The two then continue separately:

With Claude Code, Codex, Elyra and Pi, the new thread branches the agent's own session, so the agent remembers everything.
With other providers, Elyra sends the earlier conversation along with your first message in the fork.

Handoff to another provider

Continue with ▸ in the thread menu starts a new thread with another provider, in the same project and folder (worktree included). The message box is filled with a summary of where the task stands: the recap from the Context tab if there is one, plus the latest messages. Review it, add instructions, and send.

Import sessions

⌘I (or File → Import Sessions…) imports sessions you ran outside Elyra. Choose the source at the top:

Claude Code: your recent sessions from ~/.claude/projects.
Codex: your recent Codex threads. Elyra asks Codex for them, so Codex must be installed.

Each session is listed with title, folder, size and age. Filter by title or folder, tick the sessions you want, and press Import.

Each session becomes a thread with its conversation.
It belongs to the project for its folder. That project is added if needed. Sessions whose folder no longer exists go to Chats.
The thread resumes the same Claude Code or Codex session, so you can just continue.
Sessions you already imported are marked and can't be imported twice.

Export

Export… in the thread menu (or Export thread in the command palette) saves a ZIP file with:

transcript.md: the conversation as readable Markdown
transcript.json: every item in the conversation, as data
thread.json: the thread's settings and metadata