Use the F-key cartridge model
Prerequisites
- An active session with
os-consoleopen (see Open your first Totebox session) - Familiarity with the console's layout (see Navigate the console TUI)
Purpose
Understand what each default cartridge actually does before you rely on one for real work — a few minutes, and it corrects two real fabrications that were in this guide previously: F9 is not a chat interface, and F12 does not have a reject/quarantine outcome.
Procedure
-
Recognize that a Cartridge is compiled directly into the
os-consolebinary — not a plugin, not a subprocess. Pressing its F-key hands control to that registered module, which owns its own rendering and keyboard handling until you switch away. -
Use the Email Cartridge at F3: press F3, read the inbox list (unread counts and sender summaries), navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to open a message, and c to compose. Outbound mail routes through
service-email, not a direct SMTP connection. -
Use the SLM Cartridge at F9 for what it actually is: a live monitoring dashboard, not a query tool. Press F9 and read its five sections — Gateway, YoYo Fleet, DataGraph, Queue, and Cost Today. Press R to force an immediate refresh instead of waiting for the next poll.
Note: F9 has no prompt input of any kind — no text field, no submit key, no streaming response. If you're looking for how to actually run an inference query, see Run your first SLM query, which covers the real path.
-
Use the Input Machine at F12 for what it actually does: it's the platform's mandatory file-ingestion checkpoint, not a record-review-and-approve screen. Files entering through F12 have execution permissions stripped and are tagged before being routed onward — this is the only path raw external files can enter a Totebox.
Warning: a submission through F12 either succeeds (shown as Done, with a payload ID and ledger position — occasionally with a non-fatal warning attached) or fails with a generic error. There is no separate "reject and quarantine" outcome in this flow — a rejected submission simply shows as an error, not a distinct quarantine state.
Expected outcome
You know which cartridge does what without guessing: F3 for mail, F9 for read-only inference-gateway health, F12 for the mandatory file-ingestion checkpoint — and you know F9 is not where you submit a query.
Verification
Open each of F3, F9, and F12 in turn and confirm what you see matches this guide: an inbox at F3, a five-section health dashboard with no input field at F9, and a file-ingestion interface at F12.
Rollback
Viewing F3 or F9 changes nothing. A real F12 submission is not reversible — see Explore the console for the first time for that caution in more detail before you submit anything through it.
Next steps
- Run your first SLM query — the real way to submit an inference query, since F9 isn't it
- Read the command ledger — read what F12 has written, via the ledger's real HTTP API
See also
- app-console-keys — console chassis and F-key framework — chassis architecture and the Cartridge trait every slot implements
- app-console-email — communications cartridge — the Email Cartridge in full
- app-console-slm — inference infrastructure monitoring console — the SLM Cartridge's dashboard in full
- Console input application — the Input Machine in full
- Navigate the console TUI — overall TUI layout and slot navigation
Cite this record: /wiki/use-f-key-model — revision 9b9339a2, last updated 6 August 2026.