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Penates Penates

Settings & updates

What it is

The Settings view is the central place to configure how Penates looks and behaves, and to apply updates to the hub and the tools it depends on.

Settings covers eight sections:

  • Appearance: theme (Catppuccin Latte, Frappé, Macchiato, Mocha) and UI language (English or German).
  • Terminal: font size, scrollback lines, mouse mode (TMUX_MOUSE), and copy-on-select.
  • Notifications: web push subscription control.
  • Behavior: start view and other UX preferences.
  • Session restore: two toggles control auto-restore after a reboot. The first enables or disables the feature; the second controls whether --continue is passed to the CLI (to resume the last conversation). Both take effect on the next hub boot.
  • Server & Features: restart the hub process or view the last lines of logs/stdout.log and logs/stderr.log without leaving the browser.
  • Account & Data: sign out of the browser session or reset local preferences.
  • Help & About: keyboard shortcuts reference, current version, and latest release.

Update Center tracks four component categories:

  • Hub: the Penates server itself, checked against GitHub releases.
  • CLIs: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and Antigravity, checked against the npm registry.
  • Externals: Homebrew-managed tools (moshi-hook, whisper-cpp, tmux), checked via brew outdated.
  • Deps: npm dependencies (npm outdated), shown for reference only.

Each updatable component has an Update button. Clicking it spawns a detached cc-update-* tmux session that runs the update command in the background. The session survives a hub restart, so a hub self-update can finish even after the process it was spawned from exits.

Why / when to use it

Use Settings to change the theme or language immediately, adjust terminal scrollback, or toggle session restore behavior. Use the Update Center to keep all components current without opening a terminal window.

For instructions on updating Penates from the command line, see Updating.

How to use it

Open Settings: click the gear icon in the sidebar.

Change theme or language: pick a value from the dropdown in the Appearance section. The change takes effect immediately.

Toggle session restore: in the Session restore section, switch Auto-restore on or off. If auto-restore is on, the Continue conversation toggle controls whether --continue (or the equivalent for Codex/Antigravity) is passed. Both toggles take effect on the next boot.

Restart the server: in the Server & Features section, click Restart. The hub process restarts via the OS service manager (LaunchAgent on macOS, systemd on Linux). The browser reconnects automatically.

View logs: click View logs to show the last 100 lines of the server logs inline.

Check for updates: open the Updates section. Current versions and available versions are listed. Click Update next to any component. A cc-update-* session appears in the session list and runs the update. For the hub, the session will restart the hub as part of the update script, and the browser will reconnect.

Hub self-update guard: the Update button for the hub is active only when: a newer version is available, the working tree is clean (no uncommitted changes), and the local branch is not behind origin. If any condition is not met, the button is disabled with a reason.

Limits

  • Session-restore settings (auto-restore and continue) take effect on the next boot, not immediately.
  • Deps (npm dependencies) are display-only. The Update button is not available for them. To update, run npm install in the Penates directory.
  • The hub self-update guard requires a clean working tree. If you have local changes, commit or stash them first.
  • Update commands run in a detached tmux session. If the command fails, the session stays open in the session list and you can attach to read the error output.
  • On Linux, service restart uses systemd. On macOS, it uses the LaunchAgent (launchctl).