---
title: The drift chip in the sidebar footer (and its warning levels)
---

# The drift chip in the sidebar footer (and its warning levels)

## What it is

At the very bottom of the sessions sidebar, beside the version number, sits a small pill —
the **drift chip**. It answers four separate questions at a glance, and it only appears
when you are running Omniscio from source, because two of the four questions only have an
answer in a checkout.

### What the four readings mean

- **The window icon** — the code on disk versus the code this window is actually running.
  `↓` is updates that have landed since you opened the window; a restart loads them. `↑` is
  changes this window has that are no longer on disk — a restart **drops** them, so that
  direction is the one worth reading carefully.
- **The cloud icon** — this checkout versus its remote. `↑` is commits only you have, not
  pushed yet. `↓` is commits only the remote has, not pulled down yet. Restarting does
  nothing here; only a push or a pull closes it.
- **The branch icon** — how many finished branches are tagged ready and still waiting for
  the auto-lander, plus how long the oldest has been waiting. Both numbers matter: four
  branches queued ten minutes ago is a lander mid-cycle, four queued two days ago is
  stranded work, and the count alone cannot tell them apart.
- **The folder icon** — your worktrees. `●` counts the ones a create, a session or a land
  is still using; `○` counts the ones nothing is using, whose work is finished or abandoned
  while the folder is still on disk. The two always add up to everything checked out, and
  the parked number is the one that grows when disk quietly fills. Neither is coloured by a
  warning level — this chip cannot tell you whether a given number of parked folders is too
  many, and the disk readout that can is elsewhere.

Every number always prints, a zero included. A reading of `↓0 ↑0` says "nothing is stranded
either way" — it is a reading, not an absence.

One state is different: a single dash `—` means the reading could not be taken at all — no
upstream, a detached HEAD, or a ledger that would not answer. It is deliberately never drawn
as a `0`, because "nothing is wrong" and "I could not tell you" must not look the same.

## Where to find it

It sits at the very bottom of the sessions sidebar, right beside the version number. It only
appears when Omniscio is running from source rather than from an installed build, because two of
its four readings can only be answered inside a checkout.

## How it behaves

### Setting your own warning levels

Each number is shaded as it reaches a level you control. **Right-click the chip** to open
its **Warning levels** dialog — or left-click the chip and choose **Warning levels…** at the
foot of the panel, if you would rather not right-click.

There is one **warn at** and one **goes critical at** number for each of the six graded numbers
(the worktree pair is not among them — it is never graded).
The defaults are the ones we ship; change any of them and the chip re-colours the moment the
number commits — there is no Save button, because the chip behind the dialog is the preview.
The branch-age row is in **minutes**.

Two rules are built in rather than left to you:

- **Critical can never be set below warn.** Each box is bounded by its partner, so the pair
  you cannot mean is one you also cannot type.
- **While colouring is off, the levels are held read-only**, with a line saying so. With the
  colouring off these numbers change nothing you can see, and a live-looking box that does
  nothing is worse than a disabled one.

### Turning the colouring off

The same dialog has a **Colour the drift numbers** switch. Off is not "hide the chip": every
number, arrow and age still prints — only the shading goes. It is for when the colour shift
is more distracting than it is useful, and it is a display choice, never a change to what
the chip is reporting.

### Hovering the chip

Hovering (or tabbing to) the chip opens a card with a section per reading — each with its
own heading, its own lines, and a divider between them. It says exactly the same thing as
the panel you get by clicking, because both are built from the same source; the hover is the
glance and the panel is where the detail and the one action (Restart) live.

## Related

What the third reading — the count of branches tagged ready and waiting — is actually queueing for
is described on the [auto-lander dashboard](auto-lander-dashboard.md) page. The other chrome that
shares that part of a session's header is on [branch header](branch-header.md).