Install Lanes
Lanes is in early development. To get installation instructions, join our Discord community. We're keeping things close-knit so we can iterate quickly with your feedback.
On first launch, macOS will prompt you to grant Full Disk Access. This is needed so Lanes can detect running CLI processes and read worktree state across your projects. You only need to do this once; open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access and enable Lanes if the prompt doesn't appear automatically.
Lanes will also detect which AI CLIs you have installed (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI) and display their versions in Settings.
Set Your Working Directory
When Lanes opens for the first time, it will ask you to choose a working directory. This is the root folder where your projects live. You can change it later in Settings, and you can also set a per-issue working directory when creating individual issues.
Pick the folder where you keep your code repositories. Lanes will use this as the default location for new sessions.
Tour the Interface
The main window has three areas:
- Sidebar (left): Lists your projects, worktrees, and provides quick navigation. Collapse it with the toggle button at the top for more board space.
- Board (center): A task board with columns representing workflow stages. This is where your issues live.
- Detail panel (bottom): Opens when you select an issue. Shows the terminal on the left and issue details (notes, instructions, metadata) on the right. Drag the divider to resize either side.
The status bar at the very bottom shows connection state, active session count, total tokens used, and estimated cost.
Create Your First Issue
Press Cmd+N (or Ctrl+N on Linux) to open the new issue dialog. Fill in:
- Title: A short description of the task, e.g., "Add dark mode toggle to settings page"
- Description: Optional context for the task
- Instructions: The prompt that will be sent to the AI agent when a session starts
- CLI: Which AI agent to use (coming soon)
- Working directory: Defaults to your global setting; override it per issue if needed
- Worktree strategy: Choose "Create" to give this issue its own isolated git branch, or "None" to work in the current directory
Click Create to add the issue to your board. It will appear in the Backlog or Planning column.
Start a Session
With your issue selected on the board, look at the detail panel at the bottom. You will see two buttons for starting a session:
- Plan: Starts the AI agent in plan mode. The agent will analyze the task and propose a plan before making any changes. Good for understanding the scope of work first.
- Implement: Starts the agent in implementation mode. It will begin working on the task immediately.
Click one of these buttons. Lanes will spawn a terminal session, attach it to your issue, and the AI agent will start running. You can watch its output in real time in the terminal panel.
Interact with the Running Session
While a session is running, you can:
- Type directly in the terminal panel to send input to the agent
- Drag files from your file manager onto the terminal to inject their paths
- Watch the status indicator on the issue card; it shows whether the agent is busy, awaiting your input, or has stopped
The issue card on the board updates in real time to reflect the session state.
Stop a Session
To stop a running session:
- Click the Stop button in the detail panel toolbar
- Or press Cmd+D to mark the issue as complete, which stops the session and (if a worktree was created) offers to clean up the worktree
You can also right-click an issue card on the board and select Stop Runtime from the context menu.
What's Next
You now know the basics: create issues, start AI sessions, and watch them work on your board. From here, explore how the board organizes your work across multiple concurrent agents.