Interface overview

Aseptic’s app is shaped like an IDE: a rail on each side, a central panel and a dockable dock at the bottom. Each area has its purpose.

Left rail — navigation

The main sections (with a list + detail pattern) and each one’s side list:

• Scenarios — compose and operate scenarios.
• Services — add and edit micros.
• Libraries — link local libraries to their consumers.
• Mocks — define simulated responses.

Top bar (topbar) — actions

Grouped in blocks, always visible:

[▶/■ · clean · edit · + scenario] · [Git] · [search · settings · user]

The Git block groups what applies to the whole catalog: fetching every micro’s changes, cloning a new one and managing credentials. Preparing the database is not here: that’s aseptic prep. And Docker’s status lives in the right rail icon, not in this bar.

The ▶/■ button is a single one that starts or stops the scenario depending on its state. Scenario actions are always visible and are disabled when they don’t apply.

The window controls —minimise, maximise and close— sit at the end of this bar on Windows and Linux, because Aseptic draws its own frame. Not on macOS: there they are the system’s own, the usual traffic lights in the left corner, and they behave like in any other Mac app —Alt on the green one zooms instead of going full screen, and double-clicking the bar obeys whatever you set in System Settings—.

Central panel

The content of the active section. In Scenarios, the four scenario views (cards, table, graph, dependencies). In Micros and Mocks, the side list plus the editor of the selected item.

Bottom dock

Dockable, resizable and minimizable, with three tabs:

• Logs — live, filterable by micro and level.
• Mock calls — what the mocks receive.
• Status — CPU, memory and logs metrics per micro.

It is shown or hidden with Ctrl/⌘ + J.

Status bar — the footer

Below the dock, a thin line summarising the lab without opening anything:

• Scenario summary: how many micros are healthy out of those running. Click it and Status opens.
• Error counter since the last start. Click it and the Logs open already filtered to error level, with no hunting.
• Task centre: the long operations running right now —installing dependencies, building a library, preparing an image, cloning a repo, switching branch, preparing the database— with their phase and progress. Once done they move to its history: the last fifty, with their result; click one to see its output.
• Palette, theme and zoom, at hand.

It answers “is anything happening?”: a long task stops being a button that doesn’t respond and becomes a bar that advances.

Right rail — support

Support panels about what you have selected:

• Activity — session notifications.
• Docker — daemon, infra and containers.
• Databases — connections catalog.
• Environment check — ready to launch?
• Copilot — the chat that operates the app.

Settings

They open from the topbar icon. It’s a modal with several tabs: Appearance, Paths, Credentials, Catalog, Shortcuts, Privacy and About. See Settings.

Keyboard and density

The app is also operated with the keyboard (shortcuts, ? opens the reference) and remembers between sessions where you were (active section and scenario), plus the panel sizes.