Keyboard Shortcuts

Kimi Code CLI's TUI interactive mode supports a set of keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts are organized into five groups by usage context: general input, mode switching, during streaming, tool output control, the approval panel, and popup navigation. Type /help in the TUI at any time to open the built-in shortcut reference.

General Shortcuts

The following keys are always available in the input box:

Shortcut	Function
Enter	Submit the current input
Shift-Enter / Ctrl-J	Insert a newline in the input
↑ / ↓	Browse input history
Esc	Close a popup / cancel completion / interrupt streaming output or context compaction
Ctrl-C	Interrupt the current streaming output, or clear the input box
Ctrl-D	Exit Kimi Code CLI when the input box is empty

Pressing Ctrl-C during streaming cancels immediately — no second confirmation needed.

Exiting the program (pressing Ctrl-C with an empty input box, or pressing Ctrl-D) uses a double-press confirmation mechanism: after the first press, a prompt appears in the status bar; a second press of the same key actually exits. Pressing any other key in between clears the confirmation state.

Mode Switching

Shortcut	Function
Shift-Tab	Toggle Plan mode

Press Shift-Tab to enable or disable Plan mode. When enabled, the Agent prioritizes read-only tools for research and planning and can write to the current plan file; Bash is subject to the current permission mode and regular rules, without any additional separate approval triggered by Plan mode. Simply toggling does not create an empty plan file. Press Shift-Tab again to exit Plan mode.

Input & Editing

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl-G	Edit the current input in an external editor
Ctrl-V	Paste an image or video from the clipboard (Unix / macOS)
Alt-V	Paste an image or video from the clipboard (Windows)
Ctrl-E	Expand or collapse the Plan card (moves the cursor to end-of-line when no Plan card is present)
Ctrl--	Undo

Pressing Ctrl-G opens an external editor, selected according to the following priority:

1. The editor configured via the /editor command
2. The $VISUAL environment variable
3. The $EDITOR environment variable

After saving and exiting, the edited content replaces the input box; exiting without saving leaves the input unchanged.

When pasting an image or video, a placeholder is shown in the input box — the actual media data is sent to the model when the message is submitted. The system clipboard is read first; on Linux, Wayland and X11 are tried; on WSL, PowerShell is also used as a fallback to read the Windows clipboard.

During Streaming

While streaming output is active, the input box can still receive input and supports the following additional operations:

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl-S	Steer: inject the current input directly into the running turn
Esc	Interrupt the current streaming output
Ctrl-C	Interrupt the current streaming output

Pressing Ctrl-S causes the model to see your message at the next interruptible point, without waiting for the current turn to finish.

Tool Output

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl-O	Expand or collapse tool output

When collapsed tool call results exist in the history, press Ctrl-O to toggle between collapsed and expanded views.

Approval Panel

When the Agent initiates a tool call that requires confirmation, the TUI displays an approval panel. For the full approval workflow, see Interaction & Input. The available keys inside the panel are:

Shortcut	Function
↑ / ↓	Move the cursor between candidate options
Enter	Confirm the currently selected option
1 ~ 9	Directly select the option at the corresponding index
Esc / Ctrl-C / Ctrl-D	Reject the current request
Ctrl-E	Expand or collapse the full content when the panel contains a diff or file preview
Ctrl-O	Toggle the collapsed state of other tool output

Options that require feedback (such as "Reject" or "Revise") switch to a feedback input state after confirmation: type the feedback text and press Enter to submit; press Esc to exit feedback input and return to the candidate list.

Popup Mode

After opening the help panel with /help, use the following keys to navigate and close it:

Shortcut	Function
↑ / ↓	Scroll one line at a time
PageUp / PageDown	Scroll 10 lines at a time
Esc / Enter / q / Q	Close the panel

Next steps

• Slash Commands — Quick reference for built-in TUI control commands
• kimi Command — Complete reference for startup flags and subcommands