Module 1 — Getting Started · Lesson 1.3
Moving Fast
The command palette, global search, keyboard shortcuts, and undo
~9 min
What you'll learn
- Use the command palette to reach any page or recent item without the sidebar
- Tell global search and the command palette apart, and know when each is right
- Use the chord shortcuts for the surfaces you open most
- Undo a destructive change, and know what undo does and does not cover
Every wide application eventually forces a choice: learn the navigation, or learn the launcher. The launcher wins, because it does not get slower as the product gets wider. Kavanah's is on the key combination you already expect, and there are three other affordances worth the two minutes it takes to learn them.
The command palette
Press Cmd+K — Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux — anywhere in the app. The palette opens over whatever you were doing.
It does two jobs. It jumps to pages: type part of a surface's name and press Enter. And it searches your recent tasks, projects and clients, so 'onboarding' will surface the task called 'Rewrite onboarding email' as readily as it surfaces the page.
That second job is the reason to prefer the palette over the sidebar even when you know exactly where you are going. The sidebar takes you to a board; the palette takes you to the card.
Global search, and how it differs
Press / to focus the global search box. This is not the same thing as the palette, and the distinction is worth holding.
The palette is a launcher: it is optimized for going somewhere, and it ranks pages highly. Global search is optimized for finding a thing — tasks, projects, people — across the workspace, and it will keep looking after the obvious matches run out.
Use Cmd+K when you know roughly what you want and want to be there in two keystrokes. Use / when you are not sure the thing exists.
The chords worth learning
Kavanah uses two-key chords for the surfaces people open constantly. Press g then d for the dashboard, g then p for projects, g then t for tasks. Press c to create a new task from anywhere. Press ? to see the full list — which is the honest answer to 'what else is there', because the list in the app is generated from the real bindings and this lesson is not.
The two that change how the product feels are c and Cmd+K. Everything else is a convenience; those two remove the friction between having a thought and recording it, which is the friction that decides whether work gets captured at all.
Undo, and what it actually covers
Cmd+Z undoes. Cmd+Shift+Z redoes. What makes this worth a section rather than a bullet is that Kavanah's undo is server-backed, not a browser text-editing convenience: it reverses trash-style changes to tasks, projects and clients, and it is the same undo stack the AI agent's own undo tools use.
That has a real consequence. When the agent does something you did not want — moves a batch of tasks, changes a set of assignees — you are not stuck reconstructing it by hand. The action went through the same stack, and it can come back off it.
It is not universal. It covers the object lifecycle changes the stack records, not every field edit everywhere in the product, and not anything that has already left the building. An email that has been sent is sent; undo does not unsend it. That is precisely why the approval machinery in Module 8 exists for outbound actions: undo is the safety net for things that stayed inside, and approvals are the safety net for things that do not.
For deletions specifically, there is a second net: Settings → Trash holds recently deleted tasks, projects, clients and members, and restores them individually.
Build the reflexes
- 1
Open the command palette and jump to a page
Press Cmd+K (Ctrl+K), type 'reports', press Enter. Do it three times today instead of using the sidebar and it will stick.
- 2
Press ? and read the shortcut list
The in-app list is generated from the real bindings, so it is authoritative in a way a written lesson cannot be.
- 3
Create a task with c, then undo it with Cmd+Z
Do this once deliberately, on a throwaway task, so you know what undo feels like before you need it in anger.
- 4
Know where deleted things go before you delete something you care about. Restoring from here is per-item.
What to watch
- Capture friction
- The number of actions between having a thought about work and that work existing as a task.
- Healthy signal: Two: press c, type the title. Anything more and capture starts losing to the notes app on your phone.
- Undo usage
- How often anyone in the workspace actually uses undo after a mistaken change.
- Healthy signal: Non-zero. A workspace where nobody has ever used it usually contains people who did not know it existed and reconstructed the change by hand instead.
Key takeaways
- ·Cmd+K is a launcher AND a recent-items search — it reaches the card, not just the board.
- ·/ focuses global search; use it when you are unsure the thing exists.
- ·g d, g p, g t navigate; c creates a task; ? lists everything authoritative.
- ·Undo is server-backed and shared with the agent's undo tools — an unwanted agent action can be reversed.
- ·Undo does not unsend outbound actions; that is what approvals are for.
Next: your profile. It looks like a vanity page and it is not — three fields on it drive scheduling, assignment recommendations and how people reach you.