Build Station's surface area is small on purpose. Most of the time you won't open it at all — the tray icon does the day-to-day. Here's what each piece is for.
The tray icon
Lives in your menu bar (macOS) or system tray (Windows). Three states:
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Grey | Offline. Either you're not signed in, the backend is unreachable, or every project is disabled. |
| Green | Online. Connected to the backend, ready to pick up tasks. |
| Animated | At least one agent is running a task right now. |
Next to the icon (macOS only), the number of agent sessions currently running — the same count also badges the Dock icon. Both clear on their own once every session finishes; neither depends on the main window being open.
Click the icon for a menu:
- Open dashboard — opens the main window.
- Status — shows online state, active task count, queue depth per agent.
- Settings — preferences panel.
- Quit — fully closes Build Station. (Closing the main window does NOT quit on macOS — it just hides the window.)
The main window
Two main panels.
Project list (left)
Every project your account has access to, with a status badge:
- Enabled + configured — green badge. Build Station is listening for this project's tasks.
- Enabled but no working dir — orange. You enabled it, but didn't tell Build Station where the local checkout is.
- Disabled — grey. Build Station ignores this project until you turn it back on.
Filter or search from the top of the list. Click any project for its detail view.
Project detail (right)
Per-project settings:
- Working directory — the local folder Build Station opens for the agent.
- Agents — the list of agents this project has, each with an enable toggle and a per-agent concurrency limit.
- Worktree mode — whether each task spawn gets its own isolated git worktree.
- Resync — refresh agent list, MDS environments, and the project's
.mcp.jsonfrom the backend.
Settings
Tray menu → Settings. Tabs:
| Tab | What's here |
|---|---|
| Account | Signed-in user, instance URL, sign-out, switch instance. |
| Notifications | Toggle desktop notifications and pick which events trigger them. |
| Startup | Start Build Station automatically on login. |
| Updates | Auto-update toggle, last check time, current version. |
| Logs | Log level (info / debug / trace), open log file, open in-app log viewer. |
| Advanced | Per-station overrides (path to claude CLI, log directory, etc.). |
The log viewer
Settings → Logs → Open in-app log viewer. Streams live tracing output in a searchable, scrollable window — useful when something's wrong and you want to know what Build Station is actually doing without finding the log file manually.
Filter by level (info / warn / error) or by module. Pause / resume the stream. Copy lines for sharing in a bug report.
The command palette
Press Cmd+K (macOS) or Ctrl+K (Windows) from the main window. Quick actions:
- Jump to any project by name.
- Resync (full or per-project).
- Open log viewer.
- Sign out.
- Quit.
Keyboard-friendly — most things you'd otherwise click a few times to reach are a couple of keystrokes away.
Where files live
Everything except your tokens lives in standard OS app-data directories.
| Platform | Settings & logs |
|---|---|
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/meshly-station/ |
| Windows | %APPDATA%\meshly-station\ |
Tokens and per-agent API keys live in the OS keychain (macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager), not in those directories.