Settings

Open Settings from File → Settings….

Default shell

The shell new terminals run (PowerShell by default). Any executable on PATH or an absolute path works — pwsh, cmd, a WSL launcher.

Alerts

The three needs-attention channels are individually toggleable:

Setting	Effect
In-app indicator	Rail badges + the title-bar “N agents need you” banner
Sound	A quiet chime on the rising edge (a newly blocked agent)
Taskbar badge	The taskbar icon’s satellite swells and glows amber

Env-file sync (per project)

Glob patterns for untracked files to copy into new worktrees and keep synced from the root checkout — .env and .env.* by default. Add patterns like .claude/settings.local.json if your tooling keeps local config out of git.

Appearance

Theme

Twenty themes, light and dark — Orbital’s own pair, the ones the editors ship (VS Code Dark+/Light+, Darcula, IntelliJ Light, One Dark/Light, Monokai) and the community classics (Dracula, Nord, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, GitHub, Gruvbox, Solarized). Picking one pins it; System hands the choice back to the OS.

System is a pair — the theme for a dark OS and the theme for a light one — so following the OS doesn’t mean giving up your theme. Choose System and two selects appear beneath the gallery: Dracula at night, GitHub Light by day, and the window changes with the OS. They default to Orbital Dark and Orbital Light. Setting a half doesn’t switch to it; the View menu and the palette name the half your OS is asking for right now, so you can see what System would give before you pick it.

A theme colours the whole window, not just the chrome: the terminal’s ANSI palette, the editor’s syntax highlighting and the markdown preview all follow it.

Picking one applies and saves it straight away, so Cancel won’t put the old one back. The same choice is on View ▸ Theme (System and the two Orbital themes, with the rest a click further on) and in the command palette — type theme.

The theme is machine-wide: every workspace and every window shares it.

Code ligatures

JetBrains Mono draws !=, => and === as single glyphs. Some people read code faster that way and some want to see the characters they typed; the toggle covers the editor, its diffs and the terminal. Like the theme, it applies on click.

Accent colour

Per workspace, unlike the theme — a different accent per window is the fastest way to tell two workspaces apart. Pick a preset or any hex; Orbital deepens or lightens it as far as the current theme needs to keep it readable, and picks the ink that reads on top of it. Default means the theme’s own accent.

Agent (per project)

• Default provider — which agent an agent tab boots (Claude today).
• Executable path — explicit path override when the agent CLI isn’t on PATH, or you want a specific installation.

Claude status hooks

Installs Orbital’s status hooks into the settings.json of the Claude profile this workspace launches agents with — the profile directory set on the Claude agent above, else CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, else ~/.claude — so Claude sessions report status automatically:

• Preview the exact JSON before it’s merged.
• Install is idempotent; Remove strips exactly Orbital’s entries.
• Workspaces on different Claude profiles each need their own install — the badge reflects the profile this workspace actually uses.
• The hook guards on Orbital’s env vars — Claude sessions outside Orbital are untouched.

The orbital skill for Claude

Installs an Agent Skill documenting the orbital CLI, so Claude sessions you start by hand (agent tabs are briefed already) know how to report status, file tasks, and register dev servers:

• Preview the exact SKILL.md before it’s written.
• It goes to skills/orbital/SKILL.md in the same profile the hooks use: this workspace’s Claude profile directory, else CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, else ~/.claude.
• Orbital won’t overwrite a skill it doesn’t own, and Remove deletes only its own.
• When an Orbital update changes the skill, the card says Update available and offers Update — no remove-and-reinstall, and no window in which your agents have no skill at all. The same goes for the hooks and the Codex block.

Orbital instructions for Codex

Shown when Codex is one of the workspace’s agents. Codex takes no briefing file, so Orbital merges a short marked block into the AGENTS.md of its profile directory (CODEX_HOME, else ~/.codex) — the file Codex loads every session:

• Preview the exact block before it’s written.
• Install rewrites just that block; Remove strips just that block and leaves the rest of your AGENTS.md alone.