After installing Alex, a Welcome Panel appears in the VS Code sidebar. This page is a visual map of every section — so you always know what you're looking at.
Open it any time: Ctrl+Shift+P (or ⌘⇧P on Mac) → Alex: Open Welcome View. Or click the Alex icon in the Activity Bar on the left edge of VS Code.
Avatar & Cognitive State
Alex's avatar updates in real time to show the current cognitive mode — building, debugging, planning, learning, meditation, and more. It's a quick visual signal of what kind of work Alex is focused on at that moment.
Focus & Goals
Tracks your active work session with a built-in Pomodoro timer, goal progress, and streak counter. Set goals at the start of your session — Alex checks in and celebrates completions.
Smart Nudges
Proactive reminders Alex surfaces based on your session context — things like unsaved insights, long working sessions without a break, or memory consolidation opportunities. These are Alex paying attention so you don't have to.
Quick Actions
One-click shortcuts for the most common Alex operations — no need to type commands in the chat.
| Initialize | Deploy the cognitive architecture to a new workspace |
| Meditate | Consolidate session learnings into long-term memory |
| Speak | Read the current document aloud (TTS) |
| Diagram | Generate a Mermaid diagram from selected text |
| Dream | Run neural maintenance — synapse validation |
| Status | Check architecture health at a glance |
Architecture Health
A live dashboard showing the state of Alex's memory infrastructure for this workspace. Trifectas are complete skill units (skill + instruction + prompt). Synapses are the connections between skills — when close to 100%, Alex navigates domain knowledge seamlessly. Insights are saved learnings from your sessions.
API Keys & Secrets
Secure storage for optional third-party API keys. Keys are stored in VS Code's encrypted SecretStorage — never in files, never committed to Git.
The avatar is the fastest signal
Glance at it when Alex's response feels unexpected — you can read Alex's current cognitive context at a glance and adjust your next message accordingly.
Quick Actions replace commands
You don't need to remember any slash commands. Everything in the Quick Actions panel has a button — just click.
Health metrics tell a story
A synapse health below 90% means some skill connections are broken — run Dream to repair them. Insights below 5 means it's a fresh workspace; the number grows as you save learnings.
No keys needed to start
The API Keys section will be empty when you first install Alex and that's fine. All core features work without any external API keys.