Command Input

The Console panel has one command input at the bottom. Every time you hit Enter, Cockpit runs a fixed dispatch order to decide what kind of bubble opens: alias expansion → plugin match → PTY command list → one-shot command. This page is the cheat sheet for what triggers what.

Dispatch order

1. Alias expansion ── if firstWord matches an alias, replace with the
                      expanded command line
2. Plugin match ──── if any plugin's match(input) returns true, open
                      that bubble
3. PTY list ──────── if firstWord is in the hard-coded set below, open
                      an interactive terminal
4. Fallback ──────── one-shot command bubble (runs once, shows output)

The order means aliases always win first: if db = postgresql://user@localhost/mydb, typing db expands to the connection string and then gets caught by the PostgreSQL plugin.

Plugin triggers (by protocol prefix)

Case handling: browser and database plugins all toLowerCase() before matching, so POSTGRESQL:// works the same as postgresql://. Jupyter is case-sensitive — the .ipynb suffix has to be lowercase, so foo.IPYNB won't be detected as a notebook.

PTY command list (opens interactive terminal)

If firstWord is in the set below, you get an interactive PTY (full terminal — cursor control, full-screen apps, all of it):

zsh  bash  sh  fish  nu
python  python3  node  irb  lua
vim  nvim  vi  nano  emacs
top  htop  less  man

Only the first word is checked, so vim foo.txt or python -i script.py still count as PTY.

The list is hard-coded — your favourite REPL not on it won't be auto-detected. Workaround: set an alias that points it at one of the listed commands.

Fallback: one-shot command bubble

Anything else gets treated as a one-shot command (ls, make build, pytest …) — runs once, prints its output, exits.

HTML apps (leading window icon in the row)

The first icon in the row left of the input opens the HTML panel — a card grid of the HTML apps you've bookmarked; click one to run it in a Console bubble. For the panel itself (bookmarking, preview, the ~/.cockpit/html.json registry) see HTML apps.

Quick commands (⚡ button in the row left of the input)

The ⚡ icon in the row of buttons left of the text input opens the Quick Commands popover — save long command lines once, fire them with a single click. The popover has two sections:

Adding

Each section has a + button to add a row. Fill in two fields:

• Name — short label like dev, db-stg, watch-test.
• Command — the actual command line to run (can be a protocol URI, a PTY command, a one-shot command — anything).

Press Enter to save.

Running

Click the ▶ icon at the start of any row. Running goes through the same dispatch order as pressing Enter in the input box — a saved postgresql://... opens a PostgreSQL bubble, vim foo opens a PTY, make build runs as one-shot, etc.

Deleting

The ✕ icon at the end of each row. Deletes immediately, no confirmation.

Relation to the input bar's / menu

They share the same underlying data. Clicking the ⚡ button ≈ typing / in the input box and filtering through the same list. The two views differ only in interaction style:

• ⚡ button: a popover with both sections side by side and add / delete UI.
• / menu: in-place filtering — pick and run, no editing.

Use ⚡ to set things up, use / for everyday running.

Multiple bubbles, side by side

Every Enter creates a new bubble — they stack in the panel and you can drag any of them around to reorder. Two PostgreSQL connections to different databases, two browser bubbles on different sites, a terminal and a Jupyter notebook all at once: no problem.

Cmd+M maximises the focused bubble; press it again or hit Esc to restore.

Input shortcuts

• ↑ / ↓ — walk through input history. Cockpit records an entry both when a shell command finishes and when a plugin bubble is created — not only on completion.
• Tab — completion. Cockpit POSTs to /api/terminal/autocomplete with cwd, the current input, and the cursor position. A single suggestion fills in; multiple suggestions show above the input bar and you cycle through them by pressing Tab again.
• Enter — run (using the dispatch order above).
• Leading / — opens the quick commands menu (separate from the Agent panel's Skills menu — they're two different things). Type to filter, use ↑/↓ to choose, Enter or Tab to apply. Quick commands are user-defined short aliases for longer command lines; see Aliases & Env Vars.

When auto-detect gets it wrong

The rules above are deliberately conservative — anything that doesn't match the PTY list and isn't picked up by a plugin gets treated as a one-shot command. If you ever wanted to run a file called redis:// (unlikely), you'd have to rename it; there's no escape for the parser. In practice this isn't a problem; the protocol prefixes are unambiguous.