Overview and Canvas
Liney has two higher-level views that matter once you track more than one repository: Overview and Canvas.
They solve different problems.
- Overview helps you decide what needs attention.
- Canvas helps you see live terminal context across workspaces.
Overview is the management surface
The Overview surface summarizes activity across all tracked workspaces.
It includes:
- summary metrics for workspaces, dirty repositories, failing checks, and active sessions
- quick workflow launchers
- a recent activity timeline with replay
- a worktree panel
- focus lists for active work
- pull request inbox and blocker sections
This is the place to answer questions like:
- which repo is dirty right now
- where CI is failing
- which worktree still needs review
- what should I run next
Canvas is the live layout surface
Canvas is different. It is not a static dashboard.
It shows live terminal cards pulled from your open tabs and sessions. You can:
- browse cards across workspaces
- search by workspace, worktree, tab, or path
- filter by workspace
- pin important cards
- minimize cards that should stay visible but not dominant
- organize cards by workspace or as a grid
- zoom and fit the whole canvas
When to use each one
Use Overview when you want coordination and prioritization.
Use Canvas when you want spatial awareness across many active terminals.
A practical pattern
This pattern works well for multi-repo work:
- Start in Overview to see blockers and the next workflow to run.
- Jump into a workspace.
- Use Canvas when you need to compare several live tabs at once.
- Return to Overview when you want to regroup and decide what ships next.
The key idea is that Liney is not only a place to open shells. It is also a place to manage active work at repository scale.