Panel & projects

The panel is the front door. Everything else in XTop is a window it opens.

Collections, projects, and the header icons that open every other window.

Search

The search box has focus the moment the panel opens, so the whole flow is: press the shortcut, type, press Enter.

Typing filters instantly; the matching alias is shown next to the project name.

Search matches the project name, any of its aliases, its folder path, and the name of its collection. Matching ignores case, spaces, dashes, dots and underscores, so shop api finds shop-api.

When the hit came from an alias, that alias appears next to the project name, so it is obvious why the row matched.

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Move through the results
Enter	Open in the IDE
Shift+Enter	Open a terminal
Esc	Close the panel

Collections

Projects live in collections — Work, Side projects, one per client, whatever suits. A collection can be renamed and reordered freely, collapses to a header, and shows how many projects it holds.

Collections also carry commands of their own, offered in every project inside them. See Quick commands.

Adding projects

Three ways, all from the panel footer:

• Project — add one by hand.
• Import folder — point at a folder and XTop scans it for subfolders holding a .git directory or a package manifest, then lets you tick the ones you want. This is how you onboard an entire work drive in one go.
• Drag the project between collections later; nothing is locked in place.

Either way, the project's own manifests are read and its commands come with it — npm run dev, make build, docker compose up — so it is runnable the moment it lands. See commands arrive with the project.

What a project holds

Field	Why it matters
Name	The main label, and the first thing search matches
Other names (aliases)	Any number of extra searchable names — type one and press Enter or ,
Path	The folder on disk
Environment	windows or wsl — decides whether a terminal is PowerShell or wsl.exe -d <distro> --cd <path>, and which IDE flavour opens
Default IDE	Overrides the global default for this project
Figma link	Adds a Figma button to the row
Postman collection id	Adds a Postman button to the row
Open on startup	See Startup projects

The project row

Hover a row and its actions appear.

Run a command, git, notes, API, terminal — and ⋯ for everything else.

Left to right: run a command, git info, notes, API tester, terminal, then Figma and Postman if the project has them, and finally the ⋯ menu.

The ⋯ menu carries the per-open variants.

The ⋯ menu is where the variants live: open the IDE on the Windows side or the WSL side, each terminal flavour separately, reveal the folder in the file manager, manage commands, edit, and delete.

WSL entries grey out honestly

If WSL is missing, is the Microsoft Store stub, or has no distro registered, the WSL entries are disabled and say why — and offer Microsoft's install page. On a machine where the probe could not answer confidently, nothing is disabled.

List or cards

The first header button switches between the list and a card grid. The choice is remembered.

Card view — the same projects, more compact.

Recently opened

Above the collections, the panel keeps your last opened project and a short Recently opened row, built from each project's own timestamp. More expands it, Less folds it back.

Pinning

The panel hides when it loses focus. The pin in the header keeps it open, which is what you want while you are dragging projects between collections or reading git output.