Scratchpad

A floating notepad for quick notes and pasted output, with text tools, AI edit, and saving to Docs or the active workspace.

Overview

The Scratchpad is a floating editor for quick notes: paste show output, jot down a ticket number, or clean up a list of addresses without opening a document. It works in the standalone desktop app, in enterprise mode and in the web terminal.

Floating Scratchpad window with a few lines of BGP notes

Unsaved notes are not kept

The Scratchpad keeps its text in memory only. Closing it without saving discards the text.

Open the Scratchpad

Press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+J.
Click Scratch in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
Choose Tools → Scratchpad… from the menu.

The Scratchpad Window

Drag the title bar to move the window and drag the bottom-right corner to resize it. The title bar shows where a save will go (for example → Docs › Notes) and these buttons:

Button	Action
Save	Save the note and close the Scratchpad (also `Cmd/Ctrl+S`)
Pop to Tab	Move the text into a Scratchpad tab in the main tab bar
▢	Maximize or restore the window
—	Minimize to the status bar. A dot appears on the Scratch button; click it to bring the note back.
✕	Close and discard unsaved text (also `Esc`)

The footer shows Right-click for tools · AI and the cursor position.

Right-Click Tools

Right-click in the text to get:

Scratchpad right-click menu with Save Note, AI Edit, Format JSON, Sort Lines, Remove Duplicate Lines, Strip ANSI Codes, UPPER CASE and lower case

Item	What it does
Save Note	Save, same as the Save button
AI Edit…	Describe a change (for example "turn this into a table") and the AI rewrites the text. Undo with `Cmd/Ctrl+Z`. Uses your configured AI provider.
Format JSON	Pretty-print JSON
Sort Lines	Sort lines alphabetically
Remove Duplicate Lines	Keep one copy of each repeated line
Strip ANSI Codes	Remove terminal color codes from pasted output
UPPER CASE / lower case	Change the case of the text

The usual Monaco items (Cut, Copy, Paste, Change All Occurrences, Command Palette) are also in the menu.

Saving a Note

Where the note goes depends on the active tab:

A workspace tab is active (standalone only): the note is saved as a text file in <workspace>/.netstacks/notes/, named with the date and time.
Any other tab: the note is saved as a Docs document named Scratch <date and time> in the Notes category. In enterprise mode it is saved to the Controller's Docs.

You can change the Docs category and folder used for Scratchpad saves in Settings → Documents.

Tips

Paste output from a terminal, run Strip ANSI Codes, then Sort Lines and Remove Duplicate Lines to get a clean list of addresses or interfaces.
If the Scratch button is missing from the status bar, it has been turned off in the status bar settings (Scratchpad Button). The keyboard shortcut still works.