The Core and the Palette

The Core is the small capsule at the bottom centre of every screen. It is the only thing Takumi draws over your windows. At rest it shows where you are and what is on. When you ask, it grows into the Palette, the one place to open apps, change settings and run commands. Its marks grow it into Quick settings, and its clock into Today.

Press Super+Space, type a few letters of what you want, and press Enter. That is most of it.

The capsule at rest

Each part of the capsule shows only when it has something to say. Rest the pointer on any part for a moment and a word above it says what it is (“Wired · Sound 40%”, “Sunday 8 November 2026”). Moving along the capsule changes the word.

The status marks also tell you about the computer:

• Network: Wi-Fi with one to three arcs lit for signal strength, a plug for a cable, or Wi-Fi struck through when there is no network. When something is in the way it says so in words, “Sign in”, “No internet” or “Offline”, in the accent colour.
• Modes you turned on: a struck-through bell for do not disturb (with a number for messages held back), a cup while the computer stays awake, a crescent for the night light, a struck microphone while it is muted, and a shield while a VPN is on.
• A small dot at the corner: updates are waiting, or one is ready and a restart will use it.
• Battery: drawn as a battery, filled in the accent colour while charging and in red at 15% or less.
• Sound: the speaker, or a struck speaker when muted. The mouse wheel over the status marks turns the sound up or down.

When a window fills the whole screen, the capsule slides below the edge and gives its space back. It comes back when you leave that window or press Super+Space.

How it grows

The capsule is one shape that changes size. A thin line of light runs along its top edge each time it opens.

While it is open, the rest of the screen dims a little. Click anywhere outside it to close it. Notices, Quick settings and Today are on Quick settings, Today and notices.

What the Palette finds

Type part of a name. Every word you type has to appear somewhere in a row, in any order and ignoring hyphens, so wifi off and turn off wifi both find Turn Wi-Fi off. Rows you choose often move up over time.

The sum row understands digits and the signs + - * / % ^ and brackets. Emoji answer to everyday words too (“lol”, “thanks”, “party”), and any search of three letters or more shows the three best emoji at the bottom: fire finds 🔥 under Firefox. Enter on an emoji types it where you were and copies it.

The clipboard history only shows when you ask for it, so something you copied never turns up under another search. Enter on a copy pastes it into the app you were in. It keeps the last 200 copies, text and pictures, and never keeps a copy that a password manager marks as secret. Clear the clipboard history asks first.

Good to know. The Palette does not search inside your files or folders. Use Files (Super+E) for that.

Words that open a topic

Some words list everything about a topic instead of searching: wifi, bluetooth, sound, display, keyboard, power, theme, app, security, backup, printer, drives, vpn, time, earlier, apps and settings. Typing more words narrows the list. settings (or preferences, control panel, options) lists the topics themselves. apps shows every app as a grid of icons, A to Z: the arrow keys move through it, and typing on searches again.

How rows look

Results stack upward from the field, with the best match nearest your hands, under the heading Best match. The rest are grouped by kind under small headings: Apps, Settings, Commands, Wi-Fi networks, Themes, Keys, Emoji and so on. Each row has an icon, its title with the letters you typed lit, and a line under it that tells similar rows apart. A row that changes something important carries Asks first. Hold Alt and each row shows a number: Alt+1 to 9 runs that row straight away.

The empty Palette

Open the Palette without typing and you see, from the field upward:

• A row of app tiles: the apps you open most, then All apps. At first it holds the everyday ones (Firefox, Files, Terminal, Text Editor, Writer, Celluloid) until your own use takes over. ↓ from the nearest row reaches it, and ← → move along it.
• Start here, for your first week only: Connect to Wi-Fi (while you are offline), Pick a look, Keys you already know, Get your apps and Set up the assistant. Each row leaves once you have used it.
• Earlier today: the last three messages your apps sent.
• Find your way, at the top: Settings, which lists the topics (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sound, Displays, Keyboard & mouse, Power & battery, Look, Apps, Privacy & security, Backups), and Help, which opens this guide in the browser.

With nothing found, the Palette says so and offers to ask the assistant instead.

Rows that ask first

Nothing opens a terminal unless it has to. A row that could lose work or change something important asks right where it is: the first Enter arms it, and its line turns into “Press Enter again to shut down” in the accent colour. The second Enter runs it. Moving to another row disarms it.

Some rows hold a short conversation in the Core, such as joining a Wi-Fi network or making a new recovery code. Only that row stays, and a second field asks what is needed:

• A question: type the answer and press Enter. The question wraps onto up to four lines so it is always readable in full.
• A password: the field shows a lock, with Show at its end. What you type leaves the field the moment you press Enter, and is never searched.
• A yes or no: “Enter for yes · Esc for no”. Saying no is a choice, not a failure: Enter starts it again.
• A wrong answer shakes the field, outlines it in red and empties it.

When it is done, the Core closes and says how it went in a notice. Esc with an empty field stops the conversation. Esc while it works closes the Core and lets it finish, and a notice says how it ended.

A card shows one thing in place of the rows, such as a code to scan for sharing your Wi-Fi. Enter shows or hides its secret, Esc goes back, and typing searches again.

The assistant’s plan

Type a sentence of three words or more and pause. After about half a second, a Will run line above the field shows the exact commands the assistant would run for it, before anything happens. Enter on the Ask row asks it to go ahead, and anything risky is asked in the Core first.

Not yet. The assistant works with a Claude or OpenAI account you set up (Set up the assistant). It has been tested against stand-ins, not yet with a real account. More in The assistant.

Keys inside the Palette

Rows use Alt and a number because Super+1 to 9 already go to workspaces. Other keys that open the Core on a topic: Super+. (emoji), Super+P (clipboard), Super+U (accessibility), Super+Alt+Esc (force quit), and the power key (shut down, restart, sleep, log out).

With the mouse

• Click the emblem, or “Search” when nothing is open, to open the Palette.
• Click a row to run it, or a tile in the app row.
• Click anywhere outside the Core to close it.
• Click the clock for Today, and the status marks for Quick settings.
• Turn the wheel over the status marks to change the volume, and over the workspace numbers to move between workspaces.

When it does not answer

If the Core stops responding, type restart in the Palette (if it opens) and choose Restart the desktop: the Core, the Sky and the lock screen restart, and your apps stay open. If the Palette will not open at all, open a terminal with Super+Return and run takumi doctor restart desktop, or log out and in again.

From the command line

takumi intent ask 'turn off bluetooth and dim the screen to 30'   # ask the assistant
takumi intent --plan 'dim the screen to 30'                      # only show what it would run
takumi clipboard clear                                           # forget the clipboard history
takumi doctor restart desktop                                    # restart the Core, the Sky and the lock screen

You can add your own rows. Put any executable file in ~/.config/takumi/palette/. The Palette runs it with what you typed as its first argument, and it prints one row per line as JSON, such as {"id":"my:hello","title":"Say hello","run":["notify-send","Hello"]}.

To stop the assistant’s plan appearing on every pause, add intent_preview = false to ~/.config/takumi/shell.toml.