#Getting started

#Open a folder

Fold starts on the welcome page — the one place a folder is picked, added or cloned. Choose a project folder (⌘O) or clone a repository (⌘⇧C). The folder becomes a workspace: one project, one repo, one folder.

A workspace opens with one terminal session already running in its root.

You can also start from Finder: Open With → Fold on any file or folder (or drop it on Fold's Dock icon, or run open -a Fold <path>). A folder opens as a workspace. A file opens in the workspace that holds it — or, if none does, Fold opens its git project (or its folder) and the file in it.

Right-click a folder in Finder and choose Open in Fold (under Quick Actions or Services) to open it as a workspace.

From a terminal, type fold . to open the folder you are in, or fold <path> to open a folder or a file the same way. Put the command on your PATH with Install ‘fold’ Command… in the Fold menu (or the command palette); macOS may ask for your password. Installed with Homebrew, it is already there. macOS has a fold of its own that wraps text — Fold's steps aside for it whenever text is piped in or out or an option comes first, so scripts keep working; typed at a prompt, /usr/bin/fold notes.txt still wraps a file.

#The window

Everything lives in one see-through window. The stage is one grid of panes — terminals, documents and tools alike.

Part	What it is
The band	The title bar. Traffic lights, then the workspace segment (the open project, in its tint), then one chip per session, then the session-scope toggle. Everything window-wide lives here, and a drag on any of its ground moves the window.
The stage	Everything under the band, down to the foot lane. One split grid of panes: terminals, the files, diffs and notes you open beside them, and the Files, Git and Notes tools. Every pane drags by its header, and every gutter between them drags.
The dock	The glass capsule at the bottom-right: Files, Git and Notes, then a tile per open document, then your account mark, the gear, the shortcuts key and Fold's own mark. A tool opens as a tool pane in the grid — along the right edge the first time, then where you last closed it — and stays with its session until you close it.
The instruments	The capsule at the bottom-left: git's facts for the focused workspace — the branch, the worktree, the changes, the sync state, and the shelf while it has rows — then, when claude is installed, Claude usage. Each fact opens its menu right above itself.

#The first minute

• ⌘T spawns another session in the workspace root. ⌘1–9 switches between them; ⌥⇥ walks back through the most recent ones.
• Run your agent in a session. The chip wears the session's live terminal title, so an agent that says what it is doing is read from the band. Claude Code gets its own mark on the chip — moving while it works, still while it waits — and a done sound tells you when an agent finishes, wherever you are.
• ⌘P searches file names, file contents, your notes and every command. ⌘/ shows every shortcut.
• ⌘⇧G opens the Git tool pane. A change's diff or a commit opens as a document pane in the grid.
• ⌘⇧↩ zooms the focused pane to the whole stage and puts the grid back. ⌘E tucks every open document away and brings them back.
• The window is see-through glass — or flat, with the Glass switch off (see Themes) — and ⌃⌘F takes it into macOS full screen — the Dock away, the window opaque, the traffic lights on the reveal strip. The same key brings it back.

#Coming back

Every shell runs in a small helper that outlives Fold, so quitting kills nothing. On the next launch the layout comes back — every workspace that was open, its sessions, names, splits and working directories — and Fold reattaches to every shell still running, scrollback and all. A shell whose process is gone comes back as a fresh shell, said so. Fold never pretends a dead process is alive, and never types anything into a restored shell.

Closing a session asks: Shelve keeps it running out of sight, listed on the shelf in the instruments; Kill ends it. See Sessions.