Core concepts: workspace, panes, and modes
Everything in Mastery HQ builds on three ideas: a workspace (an infinite canvas you pan and arrange), panes (the windows that live on it — agents, terminal, browser, boards, music), and modes (Vibe Code for everyday work, Streaming for going live). Learn these three and the rest of the app is self-explanatory.
The workspace
Section titled “The workspace”The canvas behind your windows. Drag empty space to pan; zoom from the corner controls; the minimap / Pane Compass (bottom right) shows where everything is. You can keep several named workspaces — each remembers its own layout, style, and on-disk project folder — and switch from the Mastery HQ / <name> menu in the top bar. Layouts persist across restarts, always.
Every tool is a pane: draggable, resizable, minimizable, closable. Agents are panes with names and personalities; so are the Terminal, Browser, Sprint Board, Music player, TV, Whiteboard, Audit Log, and the rest. Panes snap magnetically while you drag, and tidy (typed, spoken, or Ctrl+Shift+G) arranges everything instantly. The workspace also keeps itself sorted: whenever a window opens, closes, or is brought up, the one you’re working in fills the left 80% and the rest line up in a column beside it — so nothing ever piles up on top of anything else.
The top bar
Section titled “The top bar”The bar across the top centre is app chrome, not a tool: the Mastery HQ / <name> workspace menu, Arrange windows, Minimize all, Settings, Help, the Workspace Style pill, and the mode switch.
Leave the pointer off it for 8 seconds and it folds down to just the workspace menu, Arrange, Minimize all and Settings, with a › where the rest were. Move the pointer back over it — or tab into it — and it opens again. Click the › to open it immediately. An open menu pins the bar open, so it can never fold away mid-interaction.
Turn it off with Collapse top bar when idle in Settings → Style if you’d rather it stayed put.
- Vibe Code Mode — the default: the full workspace, nothing hidden.
- Streaming Mode — the stream-safe state: a red frame marks the app as live, secrets are masked everywhere, your separate streaming layout loads, and OBS/Streamlabs controls appear. One click on the mode pill in the top bar switches; everything is reversible. Full overview.
(Separate from these is the bottom-bar layout density switch — Minimal / Simple / Complete — which only controls how much chrome is visible.)
How you drive it
Section titled “How you drive it”One command bar at the bottom accepts typed or spoken plain language for all of it: opening panes, routing tasks to agents, arranging, theming, status. The full list lives in the voice-commands reference.