Background work.

Some steps take a long time: a full build, a big test run, a dev server, a slow MCP tool. Waiting for them blocks the conversation, so Nilux can run them in the background while it keeps working, and you keep talking to it.

How work moves to the background

• You move it. While a step is running, press Ctrl+B. After a couple of seconds the step's line reminds you: ctrl+b to run in background. Helper agents that are running move too.
• It takes too long. A command that runs past its time limit, or a tool from an MCP server that takes more than two minutes, moves to the background by itself instead of being stopped.
• Nilux plans it that way. It starts things that are meant to keep running, like a dev server, in the background from the start.

See what is running

The status line at the bottom counts what is running in the background, for example 2 shells, 1 MCP call. To see the details, press ↓ from the prompt until that part of the status line is selected, then Enter. You see each task, how long it has been running and its last lines of output. Press x to stop the selected task, or Esc to close the list.

Helper agents running in the background appear in the agent list instead. See Subagents.

When it finishes

When background work you started ends, Nilux tells you in the conversation whether it succeeded, shows the last lines of its output and carries on with the result.