Mini and Pets

Mini is a small companion that floats above every app. Without opening the main window, you can see which conversations are running and which are waiting for you, handle approvals and questions in place, send a new task, or start a voice conversation with Klaus. It can show just a compact row of buttons, or have a pet "standing" on it.

It is configured in "Settings → Mini & Pets". Mini is off by default; click "Show mini" at the top right of that page, or press its global shortcut, to bring it up.

Showing it and visibility

• Shortcut: ⌥Space on macOS and Win+Alt+P on Windows by default. It works from any app: press once to show, again to hide. Change it at the top of the settings page: click the key box and press the new combination to save it; the cross next to it clears it. It is the same setting as "Show or hide Mini" in "Settings → Keyboard shortcuts", so changing either one changes both.
• Visibility: "Always visible" keeps Mini on the desktop; "On demand" shows it only when you press the shortcut and hides it when you click elsewhere.
• Drag Mini anywhere on screen. Push it against the left or right edge to tuck it into a strip, and click to bring it back. Right-click opens a menu: Open Klaus, Show activity, Show pet, Choose pet, Settings, Hide Mini.

What you can do with it

• Follow activity: conversations that need your attention are listed by state (running, needs input, ready, blocked) with project name and changed-file count. Click one and "Open task" to jump to it in the main window. Use "Mute notifications" in the right-click menu for a conversation you no longer want to hear about, and "Clear completed" to drop finished ones. The whole activity list can also be hidden from the right-click menu.
• Respond in place: permission requests can be answered with "Allow once" or "Deny" right there; questions Klaus asks you can be answered there too, and optional ones can be skipped. Things that deserve a closer look, such as plan confirmations, have "Review" before you decide.
• Send messages: type into "Ask Klaus anything…" to start a new conversation with that message; "Reply" on an activity item adds a message to that conversation instead. You can attach files and images, or use "Take screenshot" to pick a window or the whole screen as an attachment. Each message is limited to 8,000 characters. The input box also has a dictation microphone that reuses the source you configured for Voice input; the transcript lands in the draft so you can edit it before sending.
• Voice chat: click the microphone button to start. After each thing you say, it recognizes your speech, answers, and reads the reply aloud; start talking or click "Interrupt" to cut off a reply that is playing. Microphone and speaker can be muted separately. The voice conversation creates an ordinary conversation in Klaus, and "Open conversation" lets you continue it in text. Live voice automatically follows the conversation selected in the main window — no separate switching inside Mini.

Voice chat depends on two things: live speech recognition on this computer (the same one Voice input uses), and the speech model chosen in "Settings → Models → Default models", which reads replies aloud; see Image, Video, and Speech Generation. If either is unavailable, the button says why, for example "Live speech recognition is unavailable on this device." or a prompt to configure a speech model first.

Pets

"My pets" lists the looks you can choose. The first tile, "None", is the lightweight mode with Mini alone; the rest are the nine built-in pets: Klaus, Luma, Wick, Quill, Dapple, Morrow, Wisp, Amble, and Twill. They have idle, running, waving, jumping, waiting, working, and failure animations that follow your tasks' state, and their eyes follow the mouse.

• Size: "Customize pet" adjusts the pet size from 80 to 224 (default 112); "Reset" returns to the default.
• Import from file: pick a transparent PNG or WebP sprite sheet, 8 columns by 9 rows (1536 × 1872) or 11 rows (1536 × 2288); the two extra rows of the 11-row version hold sixteen gaze directions.
• Import from URL: enter the sprite sheet URL, "Preview" it to check the animation, then fill in a name and description and "Add pet".
• Create pet: Klaus opens a new conversation in the main window and uses its built-in pet-making skill to ask what character you want, then generates and validates the sprite sheet and adds it to the list when done.
• Pets you imported or created can be removed with "Delete pet"; built-in ones cannot. Older 9-row custom pets get an extra "Update" that has Klaus add gaze directions. Imported files live under ~/.klaus/pets/, and "Open folder" takes you there.