Keyboard Shortcuts

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Understanding Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are essential for maintaining flow while coding. Rather than interrupting your thought process to reach for the mouse, shortcuts let you execute commands instantly while keeping your hands on the keyboard. Cheetah AI is designed with keyboard-first workflows in mind, providing shortcuts for every major action you’ll perform during development. This reference covers all available keyboard shortcuts organized by functional category. Learning these shortcuts will significantly improve your productivity, especially for frequently used actions like opening the chat panel, accepting AI suggestions, and navigating between files. Most developers find that investing time to learn the core shortcuts pays dividends within the first few days of use. The shortcuts follow platform conventions, using Command on macOS and Control on Windows and Linux. Where platform-specific differences exist beyond the modifier key, both variants are listed. All shortcuts can be customized through the keyboard shortcuts settings if the defaults conflict with your muscle memory from other tools.

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Chat and AI Interaction

The chat panel is your primary interface for communicating with the AI assistant. These shortcuts help you quickly access the chat, start new conversations, and manage your interactions without leaving the keyboard. The Open Chat Panel shortcut serves double duty. If the chat panel is closed, it opens it. If the panel is already open, it focuses the input field so you can immediately start typing. This means you can press the shortcut from anywhere in the editor and begin typing your message without any additional clicks. When you have code selected in the editor and press the chat shortcut, the selected code is automatically included as context in your message. This is the fastest way to ask questions about specific code or request modifications to a particular section.

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Inline Editing

Inline editing allows you to make quick AI-assisted changes directly in the editor without opening the full chat panel. This is ideal for small, focused modifications like renaming variables, adding error handling to a function, or reformatting a code block. When you invoke Quick Edit, a small input field appears at your cursor position. Type your instruction, press Enter, and the AI generates the change inline. You can see exactly what will change before accepting it. This workflow is particularly efficient for iterative refinements where you want to make a series of small adjustments.

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Diff Navigation and Review

When the AI makes changes to your code, those changes appear as diffs that you can review before accepting. These shortcuts let you navigate through changes efficiently and accept or reject them individually or in bulk. The diff navigation shortcuts are essential when the AI makes changes across multiple locations in a file or across multiple files. You can quickly jump between changes, review each one, and make accept/reject decisions without using the mouse. For large changesets where you’ve reviewed the overall approach and trust the implementation, Accept All Diffs saves significant time.

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Mode Switching

Cheetah AI offers four distinct modes, each optimized for different types of tasks. These shortcuts let you switch between modes instantly based on what you’re trying to accomplish. Switching modes doesn’t clear your conversation history, so you can fluidly move between modes as your task evolves. A common workflow is to start in Gather mode to understand a problem, then switch to Agent mode to implement the solution. The mode shortcuts make this transition seamless.

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File Operations

File management shortcuts help you navigate your project, open files quickly, and manage your editor tabs. These are standard editor shortcuts that work consistently whether you’re using AI features or not. Quick Open is one of the most important shortcuts to master. Instead of navigating through the file tree, press the shortcut and start typing any part of the filename. The fuzzy matching finds files even with partial or out-of-order characters, making it fast to open any file in your project.

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Editor Navigation

These shortcuts help you move around within files and across your codebase. They’re essential for understanding code structure and following references through your project. Go to Definition is particularly powerful when combined with Go Back. You can dive into a function definition to understand its implementation, then immediately return to where you were. This creates a natural exploration flow where you can follow the code path without losing your place.

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Search Operations

Search shortcuts help you find content within files and across your entire project. Effective use of search is crucial for navigating large codebases and understanding how components connect. Find in Project opens the search panel where you can search across all files in your workspace. This is invaluable for finding all usages of a function, locating where a variable is defined, or understanding how a pattern is used throughout your codebase. The search supports regular expressions for complex pattern matching.

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Terminal Integration

The integrated terminal lets you run commands without leaving the editor. These shortcuts help you manage terminal instances and switch between them efficiently. The terminal toggle shortcut is designed for quick access. Press it once to open the terminal panel, press it again to hide it. This lets you quickly check command output or run a build without permanently dedicating screen space to the terminal.

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Text Selection

Selection shortcuts help you quickly select code for editing, copying, or providing as context to the AI. Mastering these shortcuts makes it faster to work with specific portions of your code. Select Word with repeated presses is particularly useful. Each press of the shortcut adds the next occurrence of the selected word to your selection, enabling multi-cursor editing. This is perfect for renaming a variable in multiple places simultaneously.

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General Commands

These shortcuts provide access to general editor functionality and settings. The Command Palette in particular is worth memorizing as it provides access to every command in the editor. The Command Palette is your gateway to every feature in Cheetah AI. If you forget a shortcut or want to discover new commands, open the palette and start typing. It shows the keyboard shortcut next to each command, helping you learn shortcuts organically as you use the editor.

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Customizing Shortcuts

All keyboard shortcuts can be customized to match your preferences. Open the keyboard shortcuts editor by pressing Cmd+K Cmd+S on macOS or Ctrl+K Ctrl+S on Windows and Linux. From there, you can search for any command and assign a new shortcut. When customizing shortcuts, consider conflicts with your operating system shortcuts and other applications you use frequently. The editor will warn you if a shortcut is already assigned to another command, letting you decide whether to override it. You can also export your keyboard shortcuts configuration to share with team members or transfer to another machine. This is found in the keyboard shortcuts editor under the export option.

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Productivity Tips

Learning shortcuts is most effective when done incrementally. Rather than trying to memorize this entire reference, pick two or three shortcuts that would help your current workflow and focus on using them consistently. Once they become automatic, add a few more. The most impactful shortcuts to learn first are typically the chat shortcut for AI interaction, Quick Open for file navigation, and the diff acceptance shortcuts for reviewing AI changes. These three categories cover the majority of AI-assisted development workflows. Consider printing this reference or keeping it accessible while you work. Glancing at the reference when you reach for the mouse helps reinforce the shortcuts until they become second nature.