Feature guide

onQ has four main surfaces: Home, Palette, Library, and Settings. Prompt editing opens as a modal from the Palette or Library.

Home and app chrome

After a vault opens, Home shows the configured global shortcut. The controls in the upper area open:

• Home
• Library
• Settings
• Theme
• About, Licenses, and Credits

Closing or minimizing the desktop window hides onQ to the system tray. Use the tray icon, tray menu, or global shortcut to show it again. Choose Quit from the tray menu to exit the process.

The version button at the bottom of Home performs a manual update check.

Palette

Press Win+Q, Meta+Q, or ⌘+Q from anywhere, or click the Home card. The Palette:

• searches title, tags, project path, and body;
• shows up to five recently copied or edited prompts when the query is empty;
• copies a result's body as its primary action;
• opens the editor from the pencil action;
• creates a draft with New prompt;
• locks the current vault with Lock vault;
• shows commands registered by enabled plugins.

Typing tag:, folder:, or similar prefixes into the Palette does not create structured filters. Those operators belong to the smart-folder DSL. See Palette and search.

Library

Library is the browsing and organization view. It contains:

• all prompts, favorites, recent prompts, and unfiled prompts;
• nested project paths;
• smart folders;
• tag views;
• local list filtering;
• prompt favorite, move, edit, and delete actions.

Projects are logical slash-separated labels stored in frontmatter. They do not move prompt files into matching filesystem directories. See Library and organization.

Editor

The editor supports:

• title, body, project path, tags, and favorite metadata;
• edit and line-preserving preview modes;
• tag completion and local tag suggestions;
• copy, save, and delete;
• prompt locking and unlocking;
• body history and restore;
• templates resolved when copied from the Palette.

New prompts remain unsaved drafts until Save is selected. See Editing and templates.

Settings

Settings is divided into:

• General: global shortcut, minimize after copy, theme, and language.
• Search: optional MiniLM model, embedding index mode, model status, embedder preference, and recency half-life.
• Vault: auto-lock, history retention, Markdown import/export, audit log, and authentication information.
• Backups: vault paths and full .onqbak export/import.
• Plugins: install, enable, disable, refresh, and uninstall.
• Updates: stable update check and the stored beta preference.

See the complete Settings reference.

Keyboard controls

Context	Control	Action
System-wide	Win+Q, Meta+Q, or ⌘+Q	Show onQ and toggle the Palette
App window	Ctrl+Q or Cmd+Q	Toggle the Palette
Palette	Arrow Up / Arrow Down	Move through actions and results
Palette input	Enter	Run the first visible action or result
Palette or editor	Escape	Close the active surface
Tag input	Enter or comma	Commit tags
Tag input	Backspace on empty input	Remove the last tag
Tag suggestion	Tab	Accept the first suggestion
Tag suggestion	Escape	Dismiss suggestions or the tag menu
Tutorial	Arrow Left / Arrow Right	Move between tutorial steps

The global shortcut is user-recordable. It must include Ctrl, Alt, or the platform Meta key plus another supported key. Linux global capture also needs read access to keyboard input devices. See Troubleshooting.

Current boundaries

Live filesystem watching, automatic three-way conflict handling, beta-feed routing, alternate plugin embedders, and the full native plugin callback surface have code or UI scaffolding but are not complete end-to-end product paths. See Feature status before relying on them.