Scratchpad

The scratchpad is a small notes editor that opens in a pane right beside a code agent. It is the place for the things you think of while an agent works: a question to ask it next, a detail to check in the plan, a snippet you will paste in later. For an agent working on a task, the notes belong to that task — they are saved as you type, they are still there after you kill the agent and pick the task again, and they are deleted when the task is archived.

Customizable keys: the editor’s own shortcuts (save, quit, copy) can be rebound in Settings → Shortcuts under the scratchpad scope. Every letter key types into the notes, so this TUI has no ? editor key of its own.

Opening

You open a scratchpad from ait minimonitor: press o and a scratchpad opens in a vertical split of the followed agent’s pane, below it by default. What you get depends on the agent:

• A task agent — one whose window is agent-pick-<id>, agent-qa-<id> or agent-resume-<id> — gets that task’s saved notes. Minimonitor confirms with Opened scratchpad for t<id>.
• Any other agent gets an unsaved pad: you can type in it, but nothing is ever written to disk. Minimonitor warns Not a task agent — notes will not be saved before opening it.

Only one scratchpad opens per task, and only one per agent pane — a second o reports A scratchpad is already open for t<id> (or for this agent) instead.

You can also launch it by hand, for example outside tmux:

ait scratchpad --task 42     # task 42's saved notes
ait scratchpad --unsaved     # a throwaway pad

A pad launched this way is just an editor: it is not bound to any agent, even with --target (which only labels its header). It saves and loads the same notes, but the binding rules under Lifecycle — closing with the agent, staying out of the agent lists — apply only to pads opened with o. Close a manual pad yourself with ctrl+q, and keep it out of agent-… windows, where monitor and minimonitor would list it as an agent.

The scratchpad is not in the j TUI switcher: it belongs beside an agent, not in a window of its own.

Layout

The pane is a one-line header, the editor, and a footer with the editor’s keys. The header names the pad, its save state and, when it was opened from minimonitor, the agent pane it is bound to:

t42 · saved · → %17

An unsaved pad is named scratch instead of t<id>. The save state is the field to watch — saved, unsaved changes, saving…, or a not saved — … message when the notes cannot be written. Every state is listed in the Reference.

Saving

You do not need to save. The scratchpad saves about a second after you stop typing, and while you keep typing it still starts a save within about three seconds of your first unsaved change. ctrl+s saves at once, and ctrl+q attempts one last save before it closes — if that save fails, it tells you so as it exits.

When tmux closes the pane instead — the agent exiting, or a kill — the scratchpad makes a best-effort save on the way out. What a hard kill can lose is stated exactly:

On a hard kill, changes not included in the latest successfully saved buffer may be lost, including edits queued during a pending save. Autosave targets starting within roughly three seconds when no save is pending; this is not a maximum loss window.

Where notes live

A task’s notes are one Markdown file, .aitask-scratchpad/<id>/notes.md, under the project root. The directory is gitignored — ait setup adds .aitask-scratchpad/ to .gitignore — so notes are never committed and stay on the machine where you wrote them.

Lifecycle

• Per task, not per agent. Kill the agent, freeze it, or let it finish; when you pick, QA or resume the same task later and press o, the same notes come back.

• Deleted at archival. Archiving a task deletes its notes — and the notes of any task folded into it. A scratchpad still open on that task shows not saved — task archived. The last three rules hold for a scratchpad opened with minimonitor’s o, which binds the pad to the agent it opened beside. A pad you launch by hand has no such binding.

• Closes with its agent. The pane closes when the agent’s pane exits, and also when you kill the agent with k in monitor or minimonitor, or drop its frozen record.

• Survives freeze and restore. Freezing the agent keeps its pane in place, so the scratchpad stays open beside the frozen-agent viewer and is still there after a restore.

• Never an agent. The scratchpad never appears in the monitor or minimonitor agent lists, and it is never mistaken for the agent it sits beside.

Next: How-To Guides — taking notes, copying them into an agent, keeping them across a re-pick.
Reference: Reference — keybindings, header states, command line, configuration.