Navigating cadence.
The sidebar, the command menu, bookmarks, themes and the keyboard shortcuts worth learning on day one.
cadence. is built to be driven from the keyboard. This page covers the parts of the interface that are not obvious from looking at them.
The sidebar
The left sidebar is the same everywhere in the app:
- Home — where you stand: a one-paragraph summary, the decisions waiting on you, the gates you own, and your own week.
- Templates — the template library, plus the gallery of ready-made ones.
- Notifications — assignments, mentions, replies and reactions.
- Projects — your projects, with a link through to the full list.
- Tags — every tag in the workspace with its project count and how many of its gates are on track, at risk or off track. Those needing a decision sort first.
- Bookmarks — anything you have pinned: a project, a phase, a task or a tag.
At the top sits the search field that opens the command menu. At the bottom is your account menu — profile, team, plan, integrations, documentation, theme, keyboard shortcuts, and log out.
On narrow screens the sidebar collapses behind a header button.
Inside a project
Opening a project switches the sidebar to that project's contents: its phases, and the tasks inside them. The project itself has four views:
- Summary — led by the gate the project is at: how ready it is, what is blocking it, and the button that closes the phase. Below it the phase spine, the open work in the phase, and the project's own details in a side panel.
- Timeline — phases and tasks laid out against dates.
- Report — the status read: a verdict and a forecast, the headline figures, what needs a decision, then the charts. See timeline & reporting.
- Activity — the comment and change history.
Phase icons in the sidebar are coloured by gate readiness — teal on track, amber at risk, red off track. Hover one for the reasons behind it.
Each phase can be read as a list, a kanban board or a Gantt chart. Your choice is remembered per user, so you get the same view next time.
The command menu
Press ⌘+K anywhere to open the command menu. From there you can:
- jump to any recent project or template,
- navigate to Home, Projects, Templates or your profile,
- create a project or a template,
- toggle the theme or open the shortcuts overlay.
It is almost always faster than the sidebar.
Keyboard shortcuts
Press ? at any time for the full list. The ones worth committing to memory:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
g then h | Go to Home |
g then p | Go to Projects |
g then t | Go to Templates |
g then u | Go to your profile |
| ⌘+K | Open the command menu |
| ⌘+alt+N | New project |
| ⌘+alt+T | New template |
| alt+T | Toggle light/dark theme |
| ? | Show all shortcuts |
Sequences like g then p are two separate presses. Shortcuts are deliberately not customisable, so that help articles and colleagues can always refer to the same keys.
Bookmarks
Bookmark a project, phase, task or tag and it appears in the sidebar under Bookmarks. This is the fastest way to keep the two or three things you are actually working on within one click, without reorganising anything for anyone else — bookmarks are yours alone.
Theme
cadence. follows your system light/dark setting by default. Override it from the account menu, or toggle it with alt+T.
Presence
On pages several people read at once — a tag dashboard, for example — you will see small avatars of who else is looking at it right now. It is live, and it is there to stop two people rewriting the same status in parallel.