Groups & environments¶

The side list on the left holds your saved connections. Three things organise it, and each does something the others cannot: groups carry policy, environments carry colour, and the per-connection AI badge shows whether a model may see the connection at all.

The side list in the free trial with the groups Web tier, Databases and Network, environment dots on each row, and AI, AI off and AI off · trial limit badges The side list on first launch in the free trial. web-01 and web-02 hold the trial's two AI places and show AI; bastion-01 and staging-app have AI turned on and show AI off · trial limit; Local and db-01 show AI off; core-router and win-jump-01 are types that cannot use AI and show no badge.

The side list¶

Search. The search… box at the top filters the list by connection name or host.
Connect. Double-click a connection, or press Enter on it. A small dot on the row shows that a session of it is open.
Add. + new connection at the bottom opens the connection dialog; the folder button beside it creates a group.
Move. Drag a connection by its handle onto a group, or right-click it and pick a group under move to group. Moving a connection never changes its AI setting, its place in the free trial or which of your connections are locked.
Right-click a connection for Connect, Edit, Duplicate, Turn AI on or Turn AI off, move to group and Delete.

The menu of a saved connection. Turn AI on does what its AI off badge does, and Move to group lists every group, with a tick on the current one.

Groups¶

A group holds related connections, and it is where policy is applied most efficiently. Right-click a group for its menu: New connection in group, Rename group, Command Safety profile…, Data Handling profile…, Expand or Collapse, a group color and Delete group. The entries that carry policy:

Command Safety profile… — the profile that decides how commands proposed against connections in this group are classified, and which of them may run without asking you. See Command Safety profiles.
Data Handling profile… — the profile that decides what is redacted out of terminal output before any of it leaves the machine. See Data Handling profiles.

Assigning a profile to a group applies it to everything inside it, so draw groups along the lines your policy follows rather than by geography or hostname.

A profile assignment is a replacement, not an addition. A group's profile replaces the Default profile for the connections in it; it does not merge with it. That cuts both ways: a group profile can legitimately be less strict than Default, so a permissive lab profile really is permissive. Resolution runs connection → group → Default, so an individual connection can override its group; the connection dialog offers that for SSH and Local connections.

Environments¶

An environment is a colour-coded tag on a connection. production and staging are seeded on a new install; you add, rename, recolour and remove them in Settings → Environments.

The colour appears as a dot on the connection's row and as the coloured left edge of its session's tab, so the environment you are working in is visible before you type anything. Colour-coding a production host red helps prevent running a correct command against the wrong host.

Renaming or recolouring an environment does not orphan the connections tagged with it: a connection stores a stable key rather than the display name, so the tag survives the edit.

AI badges¶

The badge on each SSH and Local connection says what applies to it, whether it is open or not. It is per connection: a connection with AI off is invisible to every model and every assistant, and its output is absent from AI context rather than redacted. Point at a badge to read the full reason.

Badge	Colour	Meaning	A control?
AI	Green	AI is on for this connection, or will be when you open it	Yes: turns AI off
AI off	Grey	You turned AI off for this connection	Yes: turns AI on
AI off · trial limit	Amber	Free trial: AI is on for 2 other connections	Yes: chooses this one
AI off · tab limit	Amber	Free trial: AI is already on in 2 other tabs	Yes: offers to move AI here
AI off · no subscription	Amber	The trial ended and there is no license	No
AI off · subscription ended	Amber	The subscription for this license is not active	No
AI off · license expired	Amber	A license file or your organisation's license ran out, or an online license ran out while this computer could not reach the license server	No
AI paused	Amber, with a pause sign	The clock needs fixing, OpsPilot is checking this computer's identity, or it is still reading its license after starting	No
AI off · licensing problem	Amber	Anything else, such as a suspended license or a computer your organisation released	No

Clicking a badge that is a control does what the last column says, for the saved connection and every open tab of it at once. During the free trial, choosing a connection whose badge says AI off · trial limit takes a free place, or opens a dialog that offers Use AI on … instead of … for each of the two connections that have AI. A connection's right-click menu offers the same action as its badge: Turn AI on or Turn AI off.

The free-trial dialog: AI can be on for 2 connections at a time and is on for web-01 and web-02, with buttons Use AI on bastion-01 instead of web-01 and Use AI on bastion-01 instead of web-02, the subscription address, Cancel and Subscribe Choosing bastion-01 while both places are taken. The dialog names the two connections that have AI and moves the place in one step; Cancel keeps bastion-01 waiting for a place.

A badge that only says why licensing keeps AI off is not a control: clicking it does nothing, the keyboard skips it and the menu does not offer it. What each licensing state means, and how the trial's two AI places move, is on Free trial and limits.

Only SSH and Local connections have a badge, because they are the types that can use AI. Redaction, risk tiers and the approval gate are all downstream of the badge. If a host must never be seen by a model, the badge is the control, and no provider, prompt or assistant setting reaches around it. See What gets sent.

Locked connections¶

During the free trial and without a subscription, OpsPilot opens only your first 10 saved connections, the 10 you created first. The others stay in the list, greyed out with a Locked badge in place of the AI badge, and a line above the list says how many are locked, with Subscribe where subscribing is the answer.

A locked connection cannot be opened, edited, duplicated, moved or given AI, and an assistant cannot open it. Only Delete works in its menu; the other entries say why when you choose them. Deleting one of your first 10 unlocks the next, and subscribing unlocks them all. Moving or dragging a connection never changes which ones are locked. See Free trial and limits.

The side list in the free trial with a banner and a note saying 2 saved connections are locked, and core-router and win-jump-01 showing Locked badges Twelve saved connections besides Local in the free trial. The banner and the note at the top of the list say two are locked, and core-router and win-jump-01 show Locked: they were created last, wherever they sit in the list.

From the keyboard¶

The side list is a single stop when you press Tab. Then:

Key	What it does
Up, Down (Home, End)	Moves between connections and group headers
Enter	Opens the connection (a locked one says why), or opens or closes a group
Right, Left	On a group, opens or closes it. On a connection, Right moves to its AI badge and Left moves back to the connection, or to its group
Enter or Space on an AI badge	Does what clicking the badge does
Space	Selects the connection
Shift+F10, or the context-menu key	Opens the connection's or group's menu; Up and Down move, Enter chooses, Escape closes it

Holding Enter on a badge uses it once. A dialog you close with Escape, Cancel or its x opens again at once if you use the same control again.

A screen reader reads the side list as a tree. Each connection is named by its name and what its badge says, for example "quay, AI off · trial limit", and each group by its name, how many connections it holds and whether it is open. A badge that is a control is a button named by its visible words and then what it does, for example "AI off · trial limit, turn AI on for quay", so voice control works with the words you see on screen.

A three-group setup¶

The session tab bar, the per-connection AI badges and the per-group profiles work together. A production estate usually ends up looking like this:

A Production group with a strict Command Safety profile — Run commands without asking me set to Ask me every time — and a Data Handling profile that also scrubs hostnames and IP addresses.
A Staging group with a moderate profile, set to run Only read-only commands without asking.
A Lab group with a permissive profile, set to run Everything except dangerous ones, and minimal redaction.

The same assistant then behaves differently in each group without anyone changing a setting when they switch tabs: move from a lab tab to a production tab and the classification tightens, auto-run narrows and the redaction widens, because both profiles resolve from the session's own connection. Dangerous commands always need a click, whatever the profile. See Approvals & auto-run.