@aragon-agent/cli 0.5.4 → 0.5.8

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Files changed (100) hide show
  1. package/CHANGELOG.md +747 -577
  2. package/README.md +1163 -995
  3. package/dist/agent/controller.d.ts +71 -1
  4. package/dist/agent/controller.js +135 -1
  5. package/dist/agent/entry-limits.d.ts +65 -0
  6. package/dist/agent/entry-limits.js +133 -0
  7. package/dist/agent/headless.d.ts +29 -0
  8. package/dist/agent/headless.js +86 -1
  9. package/dist/agent/reducer.d.ts +53 -0
  10. package/dist/agent/reducer.js +145 -14
  11. package/dist/agent/system-prompt.d.ts +8 -0
  12. package/dist/agent/system-prompt.js +2 -0
  13. package/dist/cli.js +76 -3
  14. package/dist/commands/builtins.js +171 -0
  15. package/dist/commands/perf.d.ts +45 -0
  16. package/dist/commands/perf.js +78 -0
  17. package/dist/commands/registry.d.ts +27 -1
  18. package/dist/config/env.d.ts +3 -1
  19. package/dist/config/env.js +74 -1
  20. package/dist/config/load.d.ts +41 -0
  21. package/dist/config/load.js +67 -2
  22. package/dist/config/schema.d.ts +108 -8
  23. package/dist/config/schema.js +81 -6
  24. package/dist/config/store.js +10 -1
  25. package/dist/session/persist.d.ts +19 -1
  26. package/dist/session/persist.js +21 -2
  27. package/dist/team/subagent.js +11 -0
  28. package/dist/todo/follow-through.d.ts +117 -0
  29. package/dist/todo/follow-through.js +186 -0
  30. package/dist/todo/limits.d.ts +114 -0
  31. package/dist/todo/limits.js +114 -0
  32. package/dist/todo/normalize.d.ts +33 -0
  33. package/dist/todo/normalize.js +117 -0
  34. package/dist/todo/panel-rows.d.ts +53 -0
  35. package/dist/todo/panel-rows.js +103 -0
  36. package/dist/todo/prompt.d.ts +54 -0
  37. package/dist/todo/prompt.js +76 -0
  38. package/dist/todo/store.d.ts +86 -0
  39. package/dist/todo/store.js +183 -0
  40. package/dist/todo/todo-tool.d.ts +38 -0
  41. package/dist/todo/todo-tool.js +134 -0
  42. package/dist/todo/types.d.ts +62 -0
  43. package/dist/todo/types.js +12 -0
  44. package/dist/tools/index.d.ts +16 -2
  45. package/dist/tools/index.js +13 -0
  46. package/dist/ui/App.js +328 -14
  47. package/dist/ui/Markdown.d.ts +7 -1
  48. package/dist/ui/Markdown.js +15 -48
  49. package/dist/ui/StatusBar.d.ts +31 -0
  50. package/dist/ui/StatusBar.js +7 -2
  51. package/dist/ui/TodoPanel.d.ts +48 -0
  52. package/dist/ui/TodoPanel.js +74 -0
  53. package/dist/ui/TodoStrip.d.ts +36 -0
  54. package/dist/ui/TodoStrip.js +32 -0
  55. package/dist/ui/Transcript.d.ts +56 -4
  56. package/dist/ui/Transcript.js +123 -11
  57. package/dist/ui/entries/AssistantEntry.d.ts +18 -1
  58. package/dist/ui/entries/AssistantEntry.js +33 -3
  59. package/dist/ui/entries/TeamCard.d.ts +9 -1
  60. package/dist/ui/entries/TeamCard.js +22 -1
  61. package/dist/ui/entries/TodoCard.d.ts +39 -0
  62. package/dist/ui/entries/TodoCard.js +57 -0
  63. package/dist/ui/entries/ToolCard.d.ts +13 -1
  64. package/dist/ui/entries/ToolCard.js +39 -5
  65. package/dist/ui/entries/ToolPreview.d.ts +2 -2
  66. package/dist/ui/entries/UserEntry.d.ts +9 -1
  67. package/dist/ui/entries/UserEntry.js +17 -1
  68. package/dist/ui/exit-snapshot.d.ts +7 -0
  69. package/dist/ui/glyphs.d.ts +12 -0
  70. package/dist/ui/glyphs.js +8 -0
  71. package/dist/ui/layout/AppShell.d.ts +34 -1
  72. package/dist/ui/layout/AppShell.js +3 -3
  73. package/dist/ui/layout/MeasuredEntry.d.ts +21 -0
  74. package/dist/ui/layout/MeasuredEntry.js +30 -0
  75. package/dist/ui/layout/ScrollViewport.d.ts +13 -1
  76. package/dist/ui/layout/ScrollViewport.js +10 -4
  77. package/dist/ui/layout/rail.d.ts +56 -0
  78. package/dist/ui/layout/rail.js +68 -0
  79. package/dist/ui/layout/viewport-geometry.d.ts +28 -0
  80. package/dist/ui/layout/viewport-geometry.js +27 -0
  81. package/dist/ui/layout/virtual-window.d.ts +100 -0
  82. package/dist/ui/layout/virtual-window.js +204 -0
  83. package/dist/ui/live-clamp.d.ts +42 -0
  84. package/dist/ui/live-clamp.js +74 -0
  85. package/dist/ui/markdown-blocks.d.ts +25 -1
  86. package/dist/ui/markdown-blocks.js +43 -0
  87. package/dist/ui/overlays/HelpOverlay.js +4 -0
  88. package/dist/ui/render-cache.d.ts +81 -0
  89. package/dist/ui/render-cache.js +195 -0
  90. package/dist/ui/render-governor.d.ts +54 -0
  91. package/dist/ui/render-governor.js +78 -0
  92. package/dist/ui/transcript-text.d.ts +11 -0
  93. package/dist/ui/transcript-text.js +5 -0
  94. package/dist/ui/use-height-store.d.ts +31 -0
  95. package/dist/ui/use-height-store.js +76 -0
  96. package/dist/ui/use-render-governor.d.ts +39 -0
  97. package/dist/ui/use-render-governor.js +57 -0
  98. package/dist/ui/use-startup-notices.d.ts +9 -1
  99. package/dist/ui/use-startup-notices.js +35 -1
  100. package/package.json +3 -2
package/README.md CHANGED
@@ -1,995 +1,1163 @@
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- # @aragon-agent/cli
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-
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- A Claude-Code / Codex-style **interactive terminal UI** for the
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- [`@aragon-agent/core`](../core) engine. Type a task, watch the agent think and
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- stream its answer, see each tool call render as a live card, and interrupt /
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- steer / configure the session — all without leaving the terminal.
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-
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- > ⚠️ **Full permission, no sandbox.** This first version runs at **maximum
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- > permission**: `bash` executes directly, file writes hit the real filesystem,
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- > and there is **no per-action approval gate by default**. Only run it in
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- > workspaces you trust. An opt-in confirmation mode is available via `--confirm`.
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-
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- ## Install
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-
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- ```bash
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- # Global
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- npm i -g @aragon-agent/cli
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- aragon
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-
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- # Zero-install
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- npx @aragon-agent/cli
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- ```
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-
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- > **Release note (R3):** `npx @aragon-agent/cli` resolves `@aragon-agent/core`
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- > from the npm registry, so `@aragon-agent/core@^0.1.0` must be published first
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- > (or bundled into the CLI `dist`). During local development inside this
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- > monorepo, npm workspaces link the local `packages/core` automatically.
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-
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- ## Quick start
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-
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- ```bash
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- # Set a key (any one of these)
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- export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
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- # ...or paste it live in the TUI via /settings, or pass --api-key
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-
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- aragon # interactive TUI
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- aragon "summarize README.md" # interactive, auto-submitting the prompt
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- echo "list files" | aragon -p # one-shot, prints to stdout then exits
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- ```
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-
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- ## Usage
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-
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- ```
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- aragon [prompt] Start the interactive TUI (or one-shot with -p / piped stdin)
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- aragon -p, --print [prompt] Headless: stream the answer to stdout, then exit
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- aragon config Open the settings screen
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- aragon config set <key> <value> Non-interactive config write (e.g. model, provider)
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- aragon config path Print the config file path
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- aragon models [--provider p] List builtin + discovered models
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- aragon --version | -v Print the version
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- aragon --help | -h Print help
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- ```
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-
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- ### Global flags
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-
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- | Flag | Meaning |
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- | --- | --- |
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- | `--provider <id>` | `anthropic` \| `openai` \| `google` |
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- | `--model <id>` | Model id |
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- | `--base-url <url>` | Override the provider base URL (OpenAI-compatible endpoints) |
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- | `--api-key <key>` | One-shot key override (not persisted) |
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- | `--thinking <level>` | `off\|minimal\|low\|medium\|high\|xhigh` |
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- | `--max-tokens <n\|auto>` | Output token cap: a number, or `auto` for the model's own ceiling (default `64000`) |
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- | `--cwd <dir>` | Working directory for tools |
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- | `--confirm` | Confirm each mutating tool call |
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- | `--tool-timeout <ms>` | Per-tool executor ceiling (default 180000) |
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- | `--idle-timeout <ms>` | Watchdog idle timeout (auto-raised to ≥ tool-timeout + 30s) |
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- | `--theme <name>` | `auto\|warm\|cool\|light` (`dark` is a compatibility alias for `cool`) |
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- | `--compact` / `--no-compact` | Transcript density: no blank rows between turns, or the default |
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- | `--hints` / `--no-hints` | Show or hide the composer hint row |
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- | `--fullscreen` | Force the full-screen TUI, overriding the automatic downgrades |
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- | `--no-fullscreen` | Force the inline renderer (the 0.2.0 behavior) |
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- | `--no-exit-transcript` | Do not replay the session summary after exiting |
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- | `--plan` / `--no-plan` | Start the session in PLAN mode (read-only research + review) or force BUILD |
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- | `--team` / `--no-team` | Enable or disable team subagents. `--no-team` does not register the `task` tool at all |
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- | `--team-max <n>` | Max subagents per dispatch for this run, clamped to `[1, 10]` |
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- | `--no-skills` | Disable the skill system entirely (no catalog, no skill tools) |
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- | `--skill <name>` | Force-load a skill's full body for this run (repeatable) |
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- | `--skills-yes` | Approve skill installs for this run (CI / headless) |
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- | `--no-color` | Disable ANSI color |
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- | `--quiet` | (print mode) suppress tool/usage lines on stderr |
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-
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- Exit codes: `0` success · `1` agent/runtime error · `2` config/usage error ·
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- `130` interrupted.
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-
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- ## Slash commands (interactive)
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-
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- | Command | Action |
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- | --- | --- |
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- | `/help` | Keybindings + command help |
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- | `/model` | Open the model picker |
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- | `/settings` | Open the settings screen |
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- | `/thinking <level>` | Set the thinking level |
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- | `/max-tokens [<n>\|auto\|default]` | Output token cap; with no argument, reports the setting **and** the effective cap for the live model |
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- | `/tools` | List active tools |
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- | `/clear` | Clear the visible transcript |
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- | `/reset` | New conversation |
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- | `/cwd [dir]` | Show / change the tool working directory |
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- | `/save [file]` | Save the session to JSON |
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- | `/resume [file]` | Load a saved session |
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- | `/plan [on\|off\|status]` | Toggle plan mode - the keyboard-free equivalent of `Shift+Tab` |
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- | `/team [on\|off\|max <n>]` | Team subagents: status and the live roster, the on/off switch, the fan-out width |
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- | `/theme <auto\|warm\|cool\|light>` | Switch the color theme live (persisted) |
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- | `/expand [n]` | Expand / collapse the n-th-from-last (default last) tool card |
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- | `/copy` | Copy the last answer to the clipboard |
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- | `/logs` | Show where this session is being logged, and at what level |
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- | `/reload` | Re-read `config.json` after editing it in another window (refused mid-run) |
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- | `/skills [sub]` | List and manage skills (see below) |
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- | `/<skill-name> [args]` | Run an installed skill directly |
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- | `/exit` (`/quit`) | Exit |
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-
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- A leading `/` meant literally can be escaped as `//`. Typing `/` opens a
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- command palette and `@` opens a file-path completion popup — `Tab` / `→`
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- completes, `Up` / `Down` moves the selection, `Esc` closes it.
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-
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- ## Keybindings
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-
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- | Key | Action |
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- | --- | --- |
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- | `Enter` | Submit (idle) / queue a steering message (running) |
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- | `Alt+Enter` / `Shift+Enter` | Insert a newline |
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- | `Shift+Tab` | Toggle **plan mode** (`BUILD` <-> `PLAN`). Equivalent: `/plan` |
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- | `Esc` | Abort the run / close an overlay / close a popup |
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- | `Ctrl+C` ×2 | Exit (first press warns) |
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- | `Ctrl+L` | Redraw the frame (clear the screen in inline mode) |
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- | `Ctrl+T` | Toggle thinking blocks |
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- | `Ctrl+O` | Expand / collapse the most recent tool card |
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- | `PgUp` / `PgDn` | Scroll the transcript a page (full-screen mode) |
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- | `Shift+↑` / `Shift+↓` | Scroll the transcript a line (full-screen mode) |
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- | Mouse wheel | Scroll the transcript (over the input box: prompt history) |
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- | `Shift`+wheel | Scroll the transcript a page |
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- | `Home` / `End`, `Ctrl+A` / `Ctrl+E` | Cursor to line start / end |
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- | `Alt/Ctrl+←` / `→` | Word-wise cursor jump |
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- | `Ctrl+W`, `Alt+Backspace` | Delete the previous word |
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- | `Ctrl+U` / `Ctrl+K` | Kill to line start / end |
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- | `Up` / `Down` | Move between draft lines; recall prompt history at the edges |
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- | `?` | Open help (empty input) |
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-
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- In **full-screen mode** the transcript is scrolled by the app itself: `PgUp` /
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- `PgDn` and `Shift+↑` / `Shift+↓`. While pinned to the bottom the viewport follows
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- new output automatically; once you scroll away the status bar shows `↑N`, a slim
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- rail on the right edge shows where you are, and a hint counts the lines below
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- you. Submitting a message always re-pins to the newest output. In **inline mode**
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- (`--no-fullscreen`) history lives in your terminal's native scrollback, printed
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- once via Ink `<Static>`.
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-
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- **The mouse wheel scrolls whatever is under the pointer.** Over the transcript
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- it scrolls the transcript three rows per notch (a page with `Shift`); over an
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- open overlay it scrolls that overlay; over the input box at the bottom it steps
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- prompt history one entry per notch, exactly as `↑` / `↓` do — including the rule
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- that an in-progress draft is never overwritten.
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-
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- Two things follow from the app owning the mouse, and they are worth knowing
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- before you meet them:
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-
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- - **Selecting text now needs `Shift`+drag** in most terminals. That is the
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- terminal's convention for "an application is tracking the mouse", not
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- something this CLI can opt out of while still reading wheel events.
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- - **`tmux` with `mouse on` keeps the wheel for itself**, so the app never sees
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- it. `set -g mouse off` hands it back.
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-
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- Turn the whole thing off with `--no-mouse`, `ARAGON_MOUSE=0`, or
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- `aragon config set mouse false`. With mouse support off the wheel simply does
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- nothing in full-screen mode — it does not fall back to editing your draft, which
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- is what it used to do. Inline mode is unaffected either way.
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-
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- ## Themes
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-
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- Three palettes plus `auto`:
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-
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- | Name | Look |
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- | --- | --- |
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- | `warm` | Terracotta + amber over warm neutrals. The default (`auto` resolves here). |
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- | `cool` | The blue/violet palette that shipped as `dark` through 0.3.x. |
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- | `light` | For light terminal backgrounds. |
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-
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- `auto` never guesses `light`: terminals cannot report their background reliably,
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- and guessing wrong makes the app unreadable rather than merely wrong-looking.
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-
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- **Migrating from 0.3.x** — `dark` was renamed `cool` when `warm` became the
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- default, and the old name still works everywhere: `--theme dark`,
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- `aragon config set theme dark`, `/theme dark`, and a config file containing
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- `"theme": "dark"` all resolve to `cool`, so a screen you explicitly chose does
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- not change under you. The value is rewritten as `cool` the next time the config
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- is saved. Only users who never picked a theme see the new default.
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-
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- Density and hints are settable the same three ways: `--compact` / `--no-hints`
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- for one run, `aragon config set density compact` / `aragon config set hints false`
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- to persist. The composer hint row also shortens to `? help` on its own after a
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- few sessions — except while a run is in progress, when it always spells out
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- `esc abort` in full.
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-
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- ## Full-screen mode
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-
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- `aragon` takes over the terminal's **alternate screen buffer** — the mechanism
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- `vim`, `htop`, and `lazygit` use. Two consequences worth knowing:
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-
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- - Your previous shell output is **covered, not erased**, and returns untouched
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- when you exit. Nothing in your scrollback is destroyed.
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- - The frame is fixed at `rows - 1` tall, which is what keeps the composer and the
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- status bar at the bottom of the screen even on an empty session.
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-
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- On exit the session is replayed into the normal buffer as plain text so the
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- conversation survives leaving the screen (`--no-exit-transcript` opts out;
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- `/save` still exports the full JSON).
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-
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- It downgrades to the inline renderer automatically when stdout is not a TTY,
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- `TERM=dumb`, a CI environment variable is set, or the terminal is under 12 rows
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- or 40 columns. `--fullscreen` overrides all of those except the non-TTY check —
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- writing screen-control sequences into a pipe or a redirected file is never safe.
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- `--no-fullscreen`, `ARAGON_FULLSCREEN=0`, or `aragon config set fullscreen false`
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- opt out permanently.
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-
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- The terminal's native scrollback and mouse wheel do not scroll the transcript in
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- this mode, and mouse tracking is deliberately left off because enabling it costs
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- text selection and copy in most terminals. If a crash ever strands your terminal
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- on the alternate screen, `reset` restores it.
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-
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- ## Plan mode
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-
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- `aragon` has two postures, and `Shift+Tab` switches between them. `/plan` does
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- the same thing for terminals that swallow the key (see below).
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-
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- | Mode | What it means |
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- | --- | --- |
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- | `BUILD` | The default, and unchanged from earlier versions: you ask, the agent does it. |
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- | `PLAN` | Research and design only. The agent reads, asks you the decisions it cannot settle by reading, and submits a plan for approval before anything is written. |
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-
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- `BUILD` is right for "rename this symbol". `PLAN` is right for "add multi-tenant
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- support" — anything where you want to see and steer the *approach* before a
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- single byte changes.
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-
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- ### What plan mode actually stops
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-
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- In `PLAN`, five tools are refused at the tool boundary: `write_file`,
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- `edit_file`, `bash`, `skill_install` and `skill_create`. That is a property of
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- the wiring, not a promise in a prompt — the refusal happens before the tool runs,
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- so the badge is telling you something that is structurally true.
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-
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- **`bash` is refused in full, `git status` included.** This is the most likely
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- question this feature generates, so: there is no reliable way to classify a shell
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- string as read-only, and a gate that is right 95 % of the time is worse than one
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- that is always right, because you stop trusting the badge. Use `read_file`,
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- `list_dir`, `glob` and `grep`, which stay available; the refusal message names
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- them so the agent has somewhere to go. There is no allowlist and there will not
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- be one built out of substring matching.
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-
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- Everything else still works: reading, searching, loading skills, and asking you
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- questions.
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-
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- ### The two plan-mode tools
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-
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- - **`ask_user`** renders a keyboard-driven wizard: 1–5 questions, 2–4 options
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- each, exactly one marked `RECOMMENDED`, plus an `Other…` free-text option.
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- `↑`/`↓` choose, `Enter` confirms and advances, `←` goes back, `Esc` cancels.
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- Pressing `Enter` through the whole wizard accepts every recommendation, which
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- is a deliberate "use your judgement" path rather than an accident. A last
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- screen lets you review before submitting.
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- - **`submit_plan`** renders the plan as a scrollable card: `a` approves, `r`
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- opens a one-line feedback field (`Enter` sends it, `←` goes back to the card),
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- `Esc` dismisses. **Approving flips the session to `BUILD` immediately and the
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- same run continues straight into implementation** — you do not have to re-ask.
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-
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- Cancelling either one is not an error. The agent is told to proceed on stated
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- assumptions rather than to retry.
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-
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- **Dismissing a plan is not how you stop.** `Esc` on a plan card asks for a
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- *better* plan — the agent is told to refine it and submit again — so a model that
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- keeps submitting keeps getting cards. To stop the run itself, **press `Esc`
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- twice**: the first closes the card, the second aborts the run. `Ctrl+C` twice
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- still exits the session outright.
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-
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- ### Where the mode is shown
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-
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- The status bar always names a non-default mode (`PLAN`, or `PLAN → BUILD` while
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- a switch is pending), including on short terminals, with `--no-hints`, and in
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- inline mode. The composer additionally shows a `PLAN` chip on its hint row and
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- tints its border, where there is room for it.
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-
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- ### Switching mid-run
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-
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- Tightening applies at once; loosening waits. Pressing `Shift+Tab` toward `PLAN`
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- during a run takes effect immediately — you pressed it *because* the agent is
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- about to do something. Pressing it toward `BUILD` during a run is **deferred to
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- the end of the run**, so a session you launched under a read-only guarantee
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- cannot start writing files because of one stray keypress. The status bar shows
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- `PLAN → BUILD` while that is pending. Approving a plan is the one exception, and
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- it is an informed act rather than a stray keypress.
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-
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- ### If `Shift+Tab` does nothing
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-
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- Some multiplexers and remote-desktop stacks never send `CSI Z`. `/plan`,
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- `/plan on`, `/plan off` and `/plan status` are first-class equivalents, and
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- `--plan` / `ARAGON_PLAN=1` / `planModeDefault` cover the startup case.
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-
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- ### Headless
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-
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- `aragon -p --plan "add SSO"` is a useful combination: the read-only gate still
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- applies, so it means *"tell me how you would do this, and do not touch my
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- repository"*. No question or plan tool is registered there — there is nobody to
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- ask — and the agent writes the finished plan as its final message in markdown.
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-
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- ## Built-in tools
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-
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- `read_file`, `write_file`, `edit_file`, `list_dir`, `glob`, `grep`, `bash` — all
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- at full permission. Paths resolve against the session working directory. The
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- per-tool timeout and 100 KB output truncation are enforced by the core executor;
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- `bash`'s `timeout` param only shrinks within that ceiling.
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-
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- When skills are enabled, four more are added — the two read tools `skill` and
311
- `skill_find`, then the two mutating ones `skill_install` and `skill_create` (see
312
- below). `--no-skills` removes them again. Updating a skill is deliberately not
313
- among them; that is a `aragon skills update` decision for you, not the model.
314
-
315
- With team mode on — which is the default — one more is added: `task`, the
316
- delegation tool (see below). `--no-team` removes it again.
317
-
318
- ## Team subagents
319
-
320
- The agent can hand parts of a job to short-lived **subagents** that run in
321
- parallel, then read one combined report of what they each found. It decides for
322
- itself whether to delegate; a session that never calls `task` is the session
323
- that existed before this feature.
324
-
325
- ```
326
- > read the auth middleware, map the route table, and check the migration
327
-
328
- ◆ team 2 running · 1 done · 84s ✉ 1
329
- ⠋ a1 read the auth middleware tool: grep 22.1s
330
- ⠙ a2 map the route table thinking 31.6s
331
- ✔ a3 check the migration done 4 turns 18.2s
332
- ```
333
-
334
- **What a subagent is.** A full agent with its own message history, the same
335
- tools and the same working directory — but no memory of your conversation, so
336
- its brief has to be self-contained. It cannot delegate further (depth is capped
337
- at one by construction) and it cannot ask you anything.
338
-
339
- **Delegate wide, not deep.** Two to four subagents is the usual size. The
340
- default cap is 5 per dispatch and 3 in flight at once; the hard maximum is 10
341
- and no config file can raise it. `maxConcurrent` is separate from `maxSubagents`
342
- on purpose: five simultaneous streams against one API key is a reliable way to
343
- collect rate-limit errors, and each one would land in the report as a failed
344
- subagent.
345
-
346
- **The report.** One text result: a header with the ok/failed counts, aggregate
347
- tokens and cost, then one section per subagent with its status, timing, the
348
- files it wrote and its own final summary. A failed subagent never fails the
349
- dispatch — partial results are the normal outcome of a fan-out. When two
350
- subagents wrote the same file the header says so, phrased as a warning rather
351
- than a fact: the file list is derived from `write_file` / `edit_file`, so a
352
- write made through `bash` is invisible to it.
353
-
354
- **Talking to each other.** Subagents get two extra tools, `team_send` and
355
- `team_wait`. Messages are delivered by attaching them to the recipient's next
356
- tool result, so nobody has to poll and nobody's work is interrupted. The limits
357
- are the point rather than an afterthought: **6 messages per subagent, one every
358
- 15 seconds, 24 per dispatch**, a broadcast costing two. Every refusal is a plain
359
- result naming the limit, never an error — an error reads as a malfunction and
360
- invites a retry, which is the behaviour the limits exist to prevent.
361
-
362
- **What you see.** While a dispatch runs, the roster above sits between the
363
- transcript and the composer and the status bar carries `agents 3/5` (`[3]` under
364
- 100 columns). Both disappear when it finishes and the transcript keeps a card
365
- with the per-agent results; `Ctrl+O` expands it to their summaries. Under `-p`
366
- the same transitions go to stderr as `[team] a1 ok 22.1s 7 tools` lines, and the
367
- children's tokens are folded into the `[usage]` footer.
368
-
369
- **Interaction with the other subsystems.**
370
-
371
- - **Plan mode reaches one level down.** In PLAN, every subagent is built with
372
- the same read-only gate, so `write_file` / `edit_file` / `bash` are refused
373
- inside them too. Parallel research is plan mode's best use, so `task` itself
374
- is allowed. A single subagent can be pinned read-only with `readOnly: true`
375
- even in a BUILD session — the field can only ever tighten.
376
- - **A skill's `allowed-tools` ceiling reaches one level down too**, so
377
- delegating is not a way around it. Subagents get `skill_find` but not `skill`:
378
- loading a skill mutates a turn-scoped registry the lead owns, and three
379
- subagents doing it at once would narrow what the lead may do next in a way
380
- nothing would report. Always-on skills still reach them.
381
- - **`--confirm`** queues subagent confirmations one at a time, labelled with the
382
- subagent that is asking (`[a2] Write: src/routes.ts`).
383
- - **Logs.** `dispatch_start` and `dispatch_end` are recorded at `info` with the
384
- ok / failed / aborted counts and aggregate usage; phase transitions at
385
- `debug`. A `team_send` subject is recorded, never its body; a subagent's brief
386
- and summary only at `trace`.
387
-
388
- **`Esc`** aborts the whole dispatch — every subagent within a couple of seconds
389
- — and the report comes back marked `ABORTED` with whatever was finished.
390
-
391
- ## Skills
392
-
393
- A skill is a reusable expert procedure stored on disk: a directory containing a
394
- `SKILL.md` (YAML frontmatter + Markdown body) and, optionally, `reference/`,
395
- `scripts/` and `assets/`. The format matches Claude Code's, so an existing
396
- community skill directory works as-is.
397
-
398
- ### Progressive disclosure
399
-
400
- This is the part that makes skills cheap enough to install a lot of:
401
-
402
- | Level | What the model gets | When |
403
- | --- | --- | --- |
404
- | 1 | Name, scope, and a one-line "what + when" | Always, in the system prompt. Whole catalog capped at 6 000 bytes. |
405
- | 2 | The full `SKILL.md` body + a list of bundled files | Only when the model calls `skill(name=…)` |
406
- | 3 | The bundled files themselves | Only when it reads them with `read_file` / `bash` |
407
-
408
- A skill costs a line in the prompt rather than its whole body, so installing
409
- many of them stays cheap. The model decides on its own whether a task matches a
410
- skill — you do not have to name one.
411
-
412
- At Level 2 the file list is split into what to read and what to run, and carries
413
- the skill's absolute root so the model can build real paths. The accompanying
414
- guidance is **platform-specific**: on Windows the `bash` tool runs `cmd.exe`, so
415
- the model is told to run `.py` with `python <abs path>` and that a `.sh` file
416
- will not work — rather than the previous, flatly untrue "run scripts with bash".
417
- `aragon skills doctor` warns when a skill bundles only scripts for the other
418
- shell.
419
-
420
- **How many fit in Level 1 depends on your descriptions, and on the language they
421
- are written in.** The 6 000-byte ceiling is measured in UTF-8 bytes: a terse
422
- English description costs roughly 180 bytes a line (~30 skills), while a Chinese
423
- one at the 220-character cap can cost 660 (~10 skills). Past that point the
424
- catalog truncates.
425
-
426
- Truncation is not a dead end. Entries are ranked before it happens, and what
427
- falls off is still reachable:
428
-
429
- - **Ranking**: scope first (`env` > `project` > `user` > `bundled`), then how
430
- recently and how often you have actually used each skill. A skill you ran an
431
- hour ago outranks one you have never used, so what survives truncation is what
432
- you actually work with — not whatever sorts first alphabetically.
433
- - **`skill_find`**: when the catalog *does* truncate, it says so and names this
434
- tool, which searches everything installed by name, description and keyword.
435
- It only ever searches **what is already on this machine** — it never reaches
436
- the network and never suggests something to install.
437
-
438
- Both are off the critical path: with no usage data recorded the order is exactly
439
- the plain scope-then-name order, and `skill_find` is only advertised in the
440
- prompt when something was actually omitted.
441
-
442
- ### Using them
443
-
444
- ```bash
445
- aragon skills list [--sort=recent] # what is installed
446
- aragon skills info <name> # version, path, provenance, files
447
- aragon skills install <source> [--yes] # dir | git repo | https .md / .zip
448
- aragon skills install github:owner/repo#v1.2.0
449
- aragon skills update <name> [--yes] [--force] [--dry-run]
450
- aragon skills update --all [--yes] # every skill that has an upstream
451
- aragon skills update --check [<name>|--all] # is there a newer version?
452
- aragon skills remove <name> [--yes]
453
- aragon skills create <name> --description "what + when" [--yes]
454
- aragon skills path # user skills directory
455
- aragon skills doctor # validate + detect tampering
456
- aragon skills usage [--json] # local use counters
457
- aragon skills usage --reset --yes # delete them
458
- aragon skills trust <dir> # allow a project skills directory
459
- ```
460
-
461
- #### Updating
462
-
463
- `update` re-fetches a skill from the source recorded in its install manifest,
464
- keeping `installedAt` and recording `updatedAt` + `previousVersion`.
465
-
466
- - **Local edits are protected.** If you have changed an installed skill, `update`
467
- refuses and names the files, *before downloading anything*. `--force`
468
- overwrites them — and **`--force` discards your edits**; copy them out first.
469
- The replaced directory is parked under the staging trash, so a mistake is
470
- recoverable by hand.
471
- - **The host allowlist is re-checked** against your *current*
472
- `skills.allowedHosts`, not the one in force when you installed. Narrowing that
473
- list therefore also constrains updates.
474
- - **`--all` never stops on one failure.** Skills that cannot be updated
475
- (hand-authored, bundled, or locally modified) are reported as `skipped`, which
476
- is not an error; only a genuine I/O or validation failure exits non-zero.
477
- - **`--check` reports `unknown` freely.** It compares the commit recorded at
478
- install time against `git ls-remote`, so it can only answer for git sources
479
- installed by a version that records one. Anything else is honestly reported as
480
- unknown rather than guessed.
481
- - **The model cannot call `update`.** Installing is something you pointed it at;
482
- swapping working instructions for different ones is a maintenance decision and
483
- stays with you.
484
-
485
- Interactively the same lives under `/skills …` (`/skills update <name> [--force]`,
486
- `/skills update --all`, `/skills list --sort=recent`, `/skills policy [mode]`,
487
- `/skills unload`, `/skills usage [--reset]`). Every usable skill also becomes a
488
- slash command:
489
-
490
- ```
491
- /pdf-forms invoice.pdf --flatten
492
- ```
493
-
494
- Both delivery paths share `skills.bodyMaxBytes`, so an oversized `SKILL.md` is
495
- truncated with a visible marker rather than submitted whole. Loading the same
496
- skill twice in one conversation returns a short digest (description, file list,
497
- guidance) instead of a second copy of the body; the model can ask for the full
498
- text back with `skill(name="…", force=true)`.
499
-
500
- Bodies may use `$ARGUMENTS` and `$1..$9`; `$$` is a literal `$`. If a skill
501
- declares no placeholder, the arguments are appended under an `## Arguments`
502
- heading instead. Where a skill's name collides with a built-in command, the
503
- **built-in wins** and the skill is reachable as `/skill:<name>`.
504
-
505
- ### Where skills come from
506
-
507
- Four scopes, later ones overriding earlier ones by name:
508
-
509
- | Scope | Location | Writable |
510
- | --- | --- | --- |
511
- | `bundled` | `<package>/skills/` | no |
512
- | `user` | `aragon skills path` | yes — the default install target |
513
- | `project` | `<cwd>/.aragon/skills/` | yes |
514
- | `project` | `<cwd>/.claude/skills/` | no — read-only Claude Code interop |
515
- | `env` | `ARAGON_SKILLS_PATH` (`:`/`;`-separated) | no |
516
-
517
- A shadowed skill is not lost: `/skills` shows it as `~shadowed by <scope>`.
518
-
519
- ### Frontmatter
520
-
521
- ```yaml
522
- ---
523
- name: pdf-forms # required, kebab-case, ≤ 64 chars
524
- description: Fill, flatten and validate AcroForm PDFs. Use when the task
525
- mentions PDF forms, field filling, or flattening a fillable PDF.
526
- version: 1.2.0
527
- license: MIT
528
- author: Jane Doe
529
- homepage: https://github.com/jane/pdf-forms
530
- keywords: [pdf, forms]
531
- allowed-tools: [read_file, bash] # enforced as a per-turn tool ceiling (union)
532
- activation: auto # auto | always | manual
533
- ---
534
- ```
535
-
536
- `description` is the only text a model sees before deciding to load the skill,
537
- so it has to say both what the skill does and when to use it. Unknown keys are
538
- preserved, so a newer Claude Code field will not break parsing.
539
-
540
- `activation: always` injects the body into every session's system prompt (12 000
541
- bytes total across all such skills); `manual` keeps it out of the catalog so it
542
- runs only when explicitly invoked.
543
-
544
- ### Security model — and its limits
545
-
546
- Be clear about what this does and does not buy you:
547
-
548
- - **Installing requires a human.** The approval gate checks whether a person is
549
- actually reachable *before* asking, and refuses when nobody is. Under `-p`
550
- there is no TUI and therefore no approver, so `skill_install` fails with an
551
- actionable message instead of writing to disk unattended. Opt out
552
- deliberately with `--skills-yes` or `skills.requireApproval=false`.
553
- - **Project directories need trusting once.** Cloning an unfamiliar repository
554
- does not grant it the right to inject instructions into your session.
555
- - **Nothing is executed at install time.** No postinstall, no dependency
556
- install; the executable bit is not preserved. Scripts run only when the model
557
- invokes `bash`.
558
- - **Archives are gated on real bytes** — total size, per-entry size, compression
559
- ratio and entry count, all abortable mid-extraction. Path traversal,
560
- absolute paths, symlinks and Windows device names are refused.
561
- - **Git is never run through a shell**, and ref / owner / repo fragments are
562
- whitelisted and refused if they start with `-`.
563
- - **Third-party text cannot break out of its prompt block**: angle brackets in
564
- descriptions, bodies and file names are neutralized before rendering.
565
-
566
- - **A changed `SKILL.md` is noticed at load time.** Every install records a
567
- sha256; discovery re-checks the one file that reaches the model's context and
568
- flags it as `!modified` if it no longer matches what you approved. See
569
- `skills.integrity` below.
570
- - **Concurrent installs cannot corrupt a skill.** Writes take a per-directory
571
- advisory lock, so two `aragon` processes installing at once queue instead of
572
- interleaving their atomic-replace steps. *Limit:* the lock relies on exclusive
573
- file creation, which is not reliably atomic on every NFS implementation. It
574
- self-expires after 60 seconds and waits at most 5, so the worst case there is
575
- no mutual exclusion — never a hang.
576
-
577
- What it does **not** do: there is **no sandbox**. Approval blocks *silent*
578
- installation; it does not make a skill you approved safe. A skill you accept can
579
- contain adversarial instructions, and its scripts run with your full user
580
- permissions — the same trust model as pasting text into the prompt and the same
581
- as the `bash` tool. `/skills info` records provenance and a sha256 per file so
582
- you can audit what arrived and notice if it changed. The integrity check answers
583
- "is this still the file I approved?", **not** "is this file from someone I
584
- trust" — there is no signing and no key distribution.
585
-
586
- `allowed-tools` **is** enforced now (see below), but read the next section before
587
- treating it as a permission boundary: it is blast-radius control, not a security
588
- boundary, and a skill can widen its own ceiling by loading another skill.
589
-
590
- ### The tool ceiling (`allowed-tools`)
591
-
592
- A skill that declares `allowed-tools` constrains which tools the model may use
593
- **for the rest of the current turn**:
594
-
595
- ```yaml
596
- allowed-tools: [read_file, write_file]
597
- ```
598
-
599
- - **Scope is one turn.** The ceiling appears when a skill is loaded — by the
600
- model calling `skill(...)`, or by you running `/<skill-name>` — and it is gone
601
- as soon as you send the next message. A skill you used this morning does not
602
- restrict unrelated work this afternoon.
603
- - **Read-only tools are always allowed**, declared or not: `read_file`,
604
- `list_dir`, `glob`, `grep`, plus `skill` and `skill_find`. What the declaration
605
- actually controls is the five tools that change something — `write_file`,
606
- `edit_file`, `bash`, `skill_install`, `skill_create`.
607
- - **Claude Code names work.** `[Read, Bash, MultiEdit]` maps onto this host's
608
- `read_file` / `bash` / `edit_file`. Tools that exist there but not here
609
- (`WebFetch`, `Task`, `TodoWrite`, …) are ignored rather than treated as errors.
610
- - **A name we cannot resolve waives the whole declaration**, and says so. One
611
- typo means that skill imposes no ceiling at all — never a narrower one you did
612
- not write. `aragon skills doctor` reports these up front.
613
- - **`activation: always` skills never impose a ceiling.** They are ambient
614
- reference material, not a procedure you chose to run.
615
-
616
- Three modes, via `skills.toolPolicy` (default `enforce`),
617
- `aragon --skill-tool-policy <mode>` for one run, or `/skills policy <mode>` for
618
- the current session (which takes effect immediately, even mid-turn):
619
-
620
- | Mode | Behaviour |
621
- | --- | --- |
622
- | `enforce` | The call is refused; the model is told what it may use instead. |
623
- | `warn` | The call runs, and you get one notice per tool per turn. |
624
- | `off` | No ceiling, and nothing about `allowed-tools` reaches the model. |
625
-
626
- `/skills unload` drops the ceiling for the current turn. It does **not** remove
627
- skill text already in the conversation — nothing can.
628
-
629
- **What this is and is not.** It is **blast-radius control, not a security
630
- boundary**. The declaration is written by the skill's own author, so a malicious
631
- skill can simply declare `[bash]`. Its value is that a declaration is now
632
- binding: you can read one in `/skills info` and decide whether to install, and an
633
- honest author's `[read_file]` means a "while you're there, run `rm -rf`" line
634
- smuggled into that skill's text — or into a file it tells the model to read —
635
- cannot execute.
636
-
637
- **And a known limit:** the ceiling is a **union** across every skill loaded this
638
- turn, and `skill` is always available. So a skill can widen its own ceiling by
639
- instructing the model to load a second, more permissive skill. This is not
640
- blocked — blocking it would either strand the model inside a skill it cannot
641
- escape, or break every multi-skill workflow — but every widening is printed to
642
- the transcript:
643
-
644
- ```
645
- Tool ceiling widened by skill "skill-creator": +write_file, +skill_create
646
- ```
647
-
648
- So it stops the smuggled instruction; it does not stop a skill that deliberately
649
- teaches the model to reach for another one.
650
-
651
- ### Usage counters
652
-
653
- To rank the catalog, the CLI keeps a small file next to your skills directory:
654
-
655
- ```jsonc
656
- // <aragon skills path>/../skill-usage.json
657
- { "schema": 1, "skills": { "deploy-preview": { "useCount": 12, "lastUsedAt": 1785050000000 } } }
658
- ```
659
-
660
- **It contains the skill name, a count, and a timestamp. Nothing else** — no
661
- arguments, no conversation content, no working directory, no machine identifier.
662
- It is never transmitted anywhere, by anything. Delete it whenever you like; the
663
- only effect is that the catalog falls back to plain scope-then-name order. Set
664
- `skills.usageTracking=false` to switch it off entirely, after which the file is
665
- neither read nor written.
666
-
667
- Automatically injected `activation: always` skills are deliberately **not**
668
- counted — they load on every turn, so counting them would say nothing about what
669
- you actually use.
670
-
671
- ## Configuration
672
-
673
- Config is layered (highest priority last): **defaults → user config file →
674
- env / `.env` → CLI flags**.
675
-
676
- - **Env / `.env`**: `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, `OPENAI_API_KEY`,
677
- `GOOGLE_API_KEY` / `GEMINI_API_KEY`, plus `ARAGON_PROVIDER`, `ARAGON_MODEL`,
678
- `ARAGON_BASE_URL`, `ARAGON_THINKING`,
679
- `ARAGON_MAX_TOKENS` (a number, or `auto` / `0` for the per-model ceiling),
680
- `ARAGON_THEME`,
681
- `ARAGON_FULLSCREEN`, `ARAGON_PLAN` (`1` starts in plan mode),
682
- `ARAGON_TEAM` (`0` disables team subagents), `ARAGON_TEAM_MAX` (fan-out width),
683
- `ARAGON_SKILLS` (`0` disables), `ARAGON_SKILLS_PATH`,
684
- `ARAGON_SKILLS_DISABLED` (comma-separated names), `ARAGON_LOG_LEVEL`,
685
- `ARAGON_LOG_FILE` (`0` disables), `ARAGON_LOG_DIR`.
686
- `ARAGON_HOME` is the exception that **cannot** come from `.env`: it is read
687
- before any `.env` is loaded. See [Files & logs](#files--logs).
688
- - **User config file** (`aragon config path`): JSON, written `0600` on POSIX.
689
- Holds provider / model / keys and your preferences, and nothing else — the
690
- prompts you type and the counters behind one-time notices live in their own
691
- files (see [Files & logs](#files--logs)). Keys are masked in the UI and never
692
- logged. It lives in your home directory — see [Files & logs](#files--logs) —
693
- and editing it by hand is supported: `aragon config edit` opens it, and an
694
- invalid edit is reported rather than silently resetting every setting.
695
-
696
- | Config key | Default | Meaning |
697
- | --- | --- | --- |
698
- | `maxTokens` | `64000` | Output token cap, clamped to `[256, 200000]`. `null` means **auto** — use each model's own ceiling, never above 64000. Absent means the default. See [Output token limits](#output-token-limits). |
699
- | `fullscreen` | `true` | Use the full-screen TUI (still subject to the automatic downgrades). Setting it to `false` opts out permanently; leaving it `true` is *not* a force — only `--fullscreen` / `ARAGON_FULLSCREEN=1` override the heuristics. |
700
- | `exitTranscript` | `true` | Replay a plain-text session summary after exiting (full-screen only). |
701
- | `transcriptWindow` | `300` | How many trailing entries the full-screen viewport renders, clamped to `[50, 2000]`. The full history stays in memory and in `/save`. |
702
- | `planModeDefault` | `false` | Start every session in plan mode. `--no-plan` still overrides it for a single run. |
703
- | `planModeMaxAskRounds` | `4` | `ask_user` rounds allowed per user message, clamped to `[1, 10]`. The counter resets on your next message; steering does **not** reset it. |
704
- | `planModeHumanTimeoutMs` | `1800000` | Ceiling on a single question / plan wait, clamped to `[60000, 7200000]`. Thirty minutes is far outside "went to get coffee", but a ceiling has to exist so an unattended terminal cannot wedge a CI job forever. |
705
- | `historyEnabled` | `true` | Record submitted prompts to `prompt-history.jsonl` for `↑` recall. Setting it to `false` stops new writes; it does not delete what is already stored (that is `aragon history clear --yes`) and does not stop reading. See [Prompt history](#prompt-history). |
706
- | `team.enabled` | `true` | Master switch for team subagents. `false` means the `task` tool is never registered — `/team on` in such a session saves the setting for next launch and says so, rather than advertising a tool that is not there. |
707
- | `team.maxSubagents` | `5` | Subagents per dispatch, clamped to `[1, 10]`. The 10 is the hard ceiling and is enforced twice — on the config value and again on what the model asks for — so hand-editing this file cannot raise it. |
708
- | `team.maxConcurrent` | `3` | Subagents in flight at once, clamped to `[1, 10]` and capped at `maxSubagents`. A separate knob because provider rate limits are a different constraint from context economics. |
709
- | `team.subagentTimeoutMs` | `300000` | One subagent's wall clock before it is aborted, clamped to `[30000, 1800000]`. A wedged subagent dies on its own ceiling without taking the dispatch with it. |
710
- | `team.dispatchTimeoutMs` | `900000` | The whole dispatch's wall clock, clamped to `[60000, 3600000]`. |
711
- | `team.maxTurnsPerSubagent` | `24` | Runaway-loop cap, clamped to `[4, 100]`. A subagent stopped here is reported as `stopped: turn cap reached`, with whatever it had produced. |
712
- | `skills.enabled` | `true` | Master switch for the skill system. |
713
- | `skills.requireApproval` | `true` | Require a human to approve `skill_install` / `skill_create`. |
714
- | `skills.catalogMaxBytes` | `6000` | Level 1 catalog ceiling, in UTF-8 **bytes**, clamped to `[500, 40000]`. |
715
- | `skills.bodyMaxBytes` | `30000` | Level 2 body ceiling, in UTF-8 **bytes**, clamped to `[1000, 50000]`. |
716
- | `skills.allowedHosts` | GitHub / GitLab hosts | Hosts an install **or update** may fetch from. Re-checked on every update, not just at install time. |
717
- | `skills.disabled` | `[]` | Skill names switched off. |
718
- | `skills.trustedProjectDirs` | `[]` | Project skill directories you have trusted. |
719
- | `skills.integrity` | `warn` | What to do when `SKILL.md` no longer matches the copy you approved. `off` skips the check; `warn` flags it in `/skills list` and once per session; `strict` removes it from the catalog and makes `skill()` refuse it. Defaults to `warn` because editing an installed skill is a legitimate thing to do — `strict` suits CI and managed environments. |
720
- | `skills.usageTracking` | `true` | Keep local per-skill use counters to rank the catalog. Name, count and timestamp only; never transmitted. Inspect with `aragon skills usage`, erase with `--reset --yes`. |
721
- | `skills.toolPolicy` | `enforce` | How hard a skill's `allowed-tools` bites, for the turn it is loaded in. `off` disables it and says nothing about it to the model; `warn` runs the tool and reports it; `enforce` refuses. Unlike `skills.integrity`, a false positive here means a skill AUTHOR under-declared their own skill — which `aragon skills doctor` reports before it can bite. |
722
- | `log.level` | `info` | `silent` · `error` · `warn` · `info` · `debug` · `trace`. See [Files & logs](#files--logs) for what each level records. |
723
- | `log.toFile` | `true` | Write records to a file at all. `false` here is respected; `--log-file` overrides it for one run. |
724
- | `log.dir` | `""` | Log directory. Empty means `<home>/logs`. Only **absolute** paths are accepted — a relative one would mean a different directory for every working directory you launch from. |
725
- | `log.maxFileBytes` | `5242880` | Rotate once a file would exceed this, clamped to `[65536, 268435456]`. |
726
- | `log.maxFiles` | `10` | Files kept in the log directory, clamped to `[1, 200]`. The oldest beyond this are deleted — on rotation **and** on the first write of each day. |
727
- | `log.redactSecrets` | `true` | Run every record through redaction. Setting it to `false` is the one way to get credentials onto disk, so it prints a warning and has no settings-screen entry. |
728
- | `log.previewChars` | `512` | How much user content `debug` keeps per field, clamped to `[0, 8192]`. `trace` is never truncated. |
729
-
730
- Byte, not character: `ToolExecutor` truncates at 100 000 **bytes**, so a
731
- character-based budget would be roughly triple its nominal size for CJK text
732
- and would get cut mid-tag.
733
-
734
- ### Output token limits
735
-
736
- Every model and every provider defaults to **64000** output tokens. You never
737
- have to configure this, and if you never touch it the number stays 64000.
738
-
739
- The number you set is an **ambition, not a promise**: it is clamped down to
740
- whatever the target model actually accepts. `gpt-4o` caps at 16384 and
741
- `gemini-1.5-pro` at 8192, and sending 64000 to either is an HTTP 400 that ends
742
- the turn — so `aragon` sends what the model will take, silently. When the model
743
- is one it has never seen (a proxy, an endpoint behind `--base-url`, a model that
744
- shipped last week), it sends 64000, and if the provider objects it reads the real
745
- ceiling out of the provider's own error, repairs the request, sends it again, and
746
- remembers the answer for the rest of the session. You see one warning line and
747
- the run continues.
748
-
749
- Four ways to change it, highest priority first:
750
-
751
- ```bash
752
- aragon --max-tokens 32000 # this run only
753
- aragon --max-tokens auto # this run only, per-model ceiling
754
- ARAGON_MAX_TOKENS=32000 aragon # env layer, between the flag and the file
755
- aragon config set maxTokens 32000 # persisted; prints "Set maxTokens = 32000"
756
- aragon config set maxTokens auto # persisted as null
757
- aragon config set maxTokens default # back to 64000
758
- aragon config get maxTokens # "64000" | "auto"
759
- ```
760
-
761
- Inside the TUI, `/max-tokens` reports the current setting **and** the effective
762
- cap for the live model, and `/max-tokens <n|auto|default>` changes it. The
763
- settings screen (`/settings`) has the same field with an `Effective:` line under
764
- it, so a value the model will not honour is visible before you save it.
765
-
766
- And by hand, in `~/.aragon-agent/config.json` (`aragon config path` prints the
767
- exact location; `aragon config edit` opens it, and `/reload` picks up an edit
768
- made in another window):
769
-
770
- ```jsonc
771
- {
772
- "version": 1,
773
- "provider": "anthropic",
774
- "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929",
775
-
776
- // Output token cap.
777
- // 64000 (or any 256..200000 integer) — an explicit cap, clamped down to
778
- // the target model's real ceiling when that ceiling is lower.
779
- // null — auto: use each model's own ceiling, never above 64000.
780
- // absent — the product default, 64000.
781
- "maxTokens": 64000
782
- }
783
- ```
784
-
785
- Out-of-range numbers are clamped on the way in **and** on the way out, so a
786
- hand-edited `900000` becomes `200000` on disk rather than reverting to the
787
- default on every launch.
788
-
789
- Extended thinking is reconciled with the cap automatically: `--thinking xhigh`
790
- asks for a 65536-token budget, Anthropic requires `max_tokens` to be strictly
791
- greater than it, and the two are resolved together rather than left to collide.
792
-
793
- These are additive: a config file written by an earlier version loads
794
- unchanged, with no migration and no version bump.
795
-
796
- ## Files & logs
797
-
798
- Everything AragonAgent keeps for you lives under one directory in your home:
799
-
800
- ```
801
- ~/.aragon-agent/ (Windows: C:\Users\<you>\.aragon-agent\)
802
- ├── config.json settings + API keys (0600 on POSIX)
803
- ├── config.json.bak written by `aragon config edit` before it opens
804
- ├── prompt-history.jsonl prompts you submitted, for ↑ recall (0600 on POSIX)
805
- ├── state.json UI bookkeeping: submit count, one-shot notices
806
- ├── logs/
807
- │ ├── aragon-2026-07-27.log today, JSON Lines
808
- │ └── aragon-2026-07-27.1.log rotated at log.maxFileBytes
809
- ├── sessions/ /save and /resume
810
- ├── skills/ aragon skills install
811
- └── skill-usage.json
812
- ```
813
-
814
- `config.json` holds **settings only**. What you typed and how often you have
815
- typed it live in the two files next to it, so that editing your config means
816
- scrolling past your own settings and nothing else, and so that submitting a
817
- prompt no longer rewrites the file that holds your API keys.
818
-
819
- `ARAGON_HOME` moves the whole tree. **It cannot come from a `.env` file** — the
820
- path is resolved when the process starts, long before a `.env` is read — so set
821
- it as a real environment variable. `aragon config home` always prints the
822
- directory actually in use.
823
-
824
- Upgrading from 0.5.0 or earlier moves your config, sessions and skills here
825
- automatically, once, and prints a line on stderr when it does. The old
826
- `%APPDATA%\aragon-agent-nodejs` / `%LOCALAPPDATA%\aragon-agent-nodejs`
827
- directories are **left in place** so that reinstalling an older build stays
828
- lossless; `aragon config home` names them, and you can delete them once you are
829
- satisfied.
830
-
831
- ### Prompt history
832
-
833
- Every prompt you submit is appended to `~/.aragon-agent/prompt-history.jsonl`,
834
- one JSON object per line, so that `↑` recalls it — in this session and in every
835
- later one. It is written `0600` on POSIX, it never leaves the machine, and it is
836
- **stored verbatim**: a redacted history would recall the wrong text, which is
837
- worse than not recalling at all.
838
-
839
- The last 100 distinct prompts are what `↑` walks. The file is rewritten down to
840
- that many entries once it passes 400 lines, and a single submission longer than
841
- 16 KiB is not recorded at all rather than recorded truncated.
842
-
843
- ```bash
844
- aragon history path # where it is, plus a reminder of what is in it
845
- aragon history list -n 50 # the 50 most recent, newest first
846
- aragon history list --json # raw entries with timestamps
847
- aragon history clear --yes # delete the file
848
- ```
849
-
850
- Set `historyEnabled` to `false` (`aragon config set historyEnabled false`) to
851
- stop recording. Switching it off does **not** delete what is already stored —
852
- `aragon history clear --yes` does that — and reading keeps working either way,
853
- so you can look before you erase.
854
-
855
- Upgrading from 0.5.x moves an existing `promptHistory` out of `config.json` into
856
- this file once, automatically and silently.
857
-
858
- ### What gets logged
859
-
860
- Logs are local files. Nothing is uploaded, ever — there is no network path out
861
- of this subsystem at all.
862
-
863
- | Level | Records | Contains your content? |
864
- | --- | --- | --- |
865
- | `error` | crashes, failed requests, config write/parse failures | no |
866
- | `warn` | degraded migrations, clamped values, dropped records | no |
867
- | `info` *(default)* | start/exit, config writes, turn boundaries with token counts, tool names and durations | **no** |
868
- | `debug` | the above, plus prompts, replies and tool arguments truncated to `log.previewChars` | yes, truncated |
869
- | `trace` | full message bodies and full tool output | yes, in full |
870
-
871
- The default is `info` specifically so that attaching a log to a bug report is
872
- safe. **`debug` and `trace` write what you typed and what the model replied** —
873
- check before sharing one.
874
-
875
- API keys are removed at every level, by two independent passes: any field whose
876
- name looks like a credential is blanked whatever it holds, and every string is
877
- scanned for known key formats *and* for the literal keys this process is
878
- holding. The second half is what covers a custom endpoint whose key looks like
879
- nothing in particular. Setting `log.redactSecrets false` disables both, and says
880
- so on stdout when you do.
881
-
882
- ### Commands
883
-
884
- ```bash
885
- aragon logs path # where records are going right now, and at what level
886
- aragon logs list # files, sizes, timestamps
887
- aragon logs tail -n 50 # render the last 50 records
888
- aragon logs tail --follow # keep printing new ones
889
- aragon logs tail --json # raw JSON Lines, for jq
890
- aragon logs tail --level warn # only warn and above
891
- aragon logs clear --yes # delete every log file
892
- aragon logs open # open the directory in your file manager
893
-
894
- aragon history path # where prompt history is kept
895
- aragon history list -n 50 # the 50 most recent prompts, newest first
896
- aragon history clear --yes # delete the prompt history
897
-
898
- aragon config home # the user-state root (and whether ARAGON_HOME set it)
899
- aragon config get log.level # one value; secrets always masked
900
- aragon config list --json # everything; secrets always masked here too
901
- aragon config edit # open config.json in $VISUAL / $EDITOR
902
- ```
903
-
904
- Per-run overrides, none of which are persisted:
905
-
906
- ```bash
907
- aragon --log-level debug "…" # or --verbose, which means the same thing
908
- aragon --no-log-file "…" # nothing reaches a file this run
909
- aragon --log-dir D:\logs "…"
910
- ```
911
-
912
- `ARAGON_LOG_LEVEL`, `ARAGON_LOG_FILE=0` and `ARAGON_LOG_DIR` do the same from the
913
- environment, and unlike `ARAGON_HOME` these three *can* come from a `.env`.
914
-
915
- ### Insecure TLS opt-in
916
-
917
- When `NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED` is the exact string `0`, the installed or
918
- locally built `aragon` process honors that setting and suppresses only Node's
919
- standard insecure-TLS warning. Every unrelated process warning remains visible,
920
- and any other value leaves warning behavior unchanged. The check happens when a
921
- warning is emitted, so a `0` loaded from the project `.env` is covered too; the
922
- CLI never creates, normalizes, or persists this variable.
923
-
924
- > **Security warning:** `0` genuinely disables certificate verification. It does
925
- > not make an insecure connection safe and can expose credentials or request
926
- > contents to interception. Use it only in a controlled environment where you
927
- > accept that risk.
928
-
929
- The automatic filter starts with the `aragon` process. An earlier `npm install`
930
- or `npx` bootstrap belongs to npm and is outside the installed package's process
931
- boundary, so that parent may still print Node's warning. The official repository
932
- release flow covers its npm children through `publish-latest.ps1`; callers that
933
- own another npm/npx parent must preload the filter in that parent themselves if
934
- quiet output is required.
935
-
936
- ### Theming & color
937
-
938
- `--theme` / `config.theme` / `/theme` pick a palette: `warm`, `cool`, `light`, or
939
- `auto` (which resolves to `warm` — terminals can't reliably report their
940
- background). `dark` remains accepted everywhere as an alias for `cool`.
941
- Colors degrade automatically to your terminal's depth (truecolor → 256 → 16 →
942
- monochrome) and glyphs fall back to ASCII on terminals without Unicode. Color is
943
- disabled — and the UI renders plain monochrome with ASCII glyphs — when any of
944
- `NO_COLOR`, `--no-color`, `TERM=dumb`, or `config.color=false` is set; `FORCE_COLOR`
945
- is respected. `reducedMotion` (also `ARAGON_REDUCED_MOTION`, and implied by
946
- `--no-color`) replaces spinners with a static glyph.
947
-
948
- ### Timeout invariant
949
-
950
- The core idle watchdog (60 s by default) is **shorter** than the tool timeout
951
- (120 s), so a long single tool run (a build, `npm install`) would be killed
952
- mid-run. The CLI fixes this by always constructing the agent with
953
- `idleTimeout ≥ toolTimeout` (defaults 210 s ≥ 180 s), re-derived after config
954
- merge. Raise both `--tool-timeout` / `--idle-timeout` for genuinely long jobs.
955
-
956
- ## Development
957
-
958
- ```bash
959
- npm run build -w packages/cli # tsc + shebang → dist/cli.js
960
- npm test -w packages/cli # vitest
961
- node packages/cli/dist/cli.js --version
962
- ```
963
-
964
- ### Manual smoke checklist
965
-
966
- - `npm run build -w packages/cli` produces an executable `dist/cli.js` with a
967
- shebang; `node packages/cli/dist/cli.js --version` prints the version.
968
- - `npm pack -w packages/cli --dry-run --json` lists `dist/cli.js` under `files`.
969
- - With `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` set: `aragon` streams a reply, a tool card renders,
970
- `Esc` aborts mid-run, `/model` switches models, `/settings` saves a key,
971
- `Ctrl+C` twice exits.
972
- - `echo "list files" | node dist/cli.js -p` prints an answer and exits `0`.
973
- - A missing/invalid key produces a visible, actionable message (never a blank
974
- screen), both in the TUI and headless.
975
- - `Shift+Tab` at 40, 80 and 120 columns - the chip, the hint and the status bar
976
- are all legible and nothing wraps onto a second row.
977
- - The question wizard at 24 rows with 5 questions x 4 options - no clipping, and
978
- the `n/N` counter matches what is on screen.
979
- - Approve a plan and watch the SAME run start writing files, with no second
980
- prompt.
981
- - `--no-color` on a legacy `cmd.exe` - the chip renders `[PLAN]`, radios render
982
- `*`/`o`, checkboxes render `[x]`/`[ ]`, no mojibake anywhere.
983
- - A plan with a 600-character summary and a 400-character step detail - the text
984
- wraps and scrolls, the footer count matches the real number of rows, and
985
- nothing is truncated to a single line.
986
- - `--no-hints` on a 20-row terminal in plan mode - the status bar still says
987
- `PLAN` with no chip on screen.
988
- - Dismiss a plan card with `Esc`, let the agent resubmit, then press `Esc` twice:
989
- the run aborts and the session returns to an idle prompt. Do this one BY HAND
990
- as well as in a test - the point of the check is whether the exit is findable,
991
- which no assertion can tell you.
992
-
993
- ## License
994
-
995
- MIT
1
+ # @aragon-agent/cli
2
+
3
+ A Claude-Code / Codex-style **interactive terminal UI** for the
4
+ [`@aragon-agent/core`](../core) engine. Type a task, watch the agent think and
5
+ stream its answer, see each tool call render as a live card, and interrupt /
6
+ steer / configure the session — all without leaving the terminal.
7
+
8
+ > ⚠️ **Full permission, no sandbox.** This first version runs at **maximum
9
+ > permission**: `bash` executes directly, file writes hit the real filesystem,
10
+ > and there is **no per-action approval gate by default**. Only run it in
11
+ > workspaces you trust. An opt-in confirmation mode is available via `--confirm`.
12
+
13
+ ## Install
14
+
15
+ ```bash
16
+ # Global
17
+ npm i -g @aragon-agent/cli
18
+ aragon
19
+
20
+ # Zero-install
21
+ npx @aragon-agent/cli
22
+ ```
23
+
24
+ > **Release note (R3):** `npx @aragon-agent/cli` resolves `@aragon-agent/core`
25
+ > from the npm registry, so `@aragon-agent/core@^0.1.0` must be published first
26
+ > (or bundled into the CLI `dist`). During local development inside this
27
+ > monorepo, npm workspaces link the local `packages/core` automatically.
28
+
29
+ ## Quick start
30
+
31
+ ```bash
32
+ # Set a key (any one of these)
33
+ export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
34
+ # ...or paste it live in the TUI via /settings, or pass --api-key
35
+
36
+ aragon # interactive TUI
37
+ aragon "summarize README.md" # interactive, auto-submitting the prompt
38
+ echo "list files" | aragon -p # one-shot, prints to stdout then exits
39
+ ```
40
+
41
+ ## Usage
42
+
43
+ ```
44
+ aragon [prompt] Start the interactive TUI (or one-shot with -p / piped stdin)
45
+ aragon -p, --print [prompt] Headless: stream the answer to stdout, then exit
46
+ aragon config Open the settings screen
47
+ aragon config set <key> <value> Non-interactive config write (e.g. model, provider)
48
+ aragon config path Print the config file path
49
+ aragon models [--provider p] List builtin + discovered models
50
+ aragon --version | -v Print the version
51
+ aragon --help | -h Print help
52
+ ```
53
+
54
+ ### Global flags
55
+
56
+ | Flag | Meaning |
57
+ | --- | --- |
58
+ | `--provider <id>` | `anthropic` \| `openai` \| `google` |
59
+ | `--model <id>` | Model id |
60
+ | `--base-url <url>` | Override the provider base URL (OpenAI-compatible endpoints) |
61
+ | `--api-key <key>` | One-shot key override (not persisted) |
62
+ | `--thinking <level>` | `off\|minimal\|low\|medium\|high\|xhigh` |
63
+ | `--max-tokens <n\|auto>` | Output token cap: a number, or `auto` for the model's own ceiling (default `64000`) |
64
+ | `--cwd <dir>` | Working directory for tools |
65
+ | `--confirm` | Confirm each mutating tool call |
66
+ | `--tool-timeout <ms>` | Per-tool executor ceiling (default 180000) |
67
+ | `--idle-timeout <ms>` | Watchdog idle timeout (auto-raised to ≥ tool-timeout + 30s) |
68
+ | `--theme <name>` | `auto\|warm\|cool\|light` (`dark` is a compatibility alias for `cool`) |
69
+ | `--compact` / `--no-compact` | Transcript density: no blank rows between turns, or the default |
70
+ | `--hints` / `--no-hints` | Show or hide the composer hint row |
71
+ | `--fullscreen` | Force the full-screen TUI, overriding the automatic downgrades |
72
+ | `--no-fullscreen` | Force the inline renderer (the 0.2.0 behavior) |
73
+ | `--no-exit-transcript` | Do not replay the session summary after exiting |
74
+ | `--plan` / `--no-plan` | Start the session in PLAN mode (read-only research + review) or force BUILD |
75
+ | `--team` / `--no-team` | Enable or disable team subagents. `--no-team` does not register the `task` tool at all |
76
+ | `--team-max <n>` | Max subagents per dispatch for this run, clamped to `[1, 10]` |
77
+ | `--todo` / `--no-todo` | Enable or disable todo planning. `--no-todo` does not register the `todo_write` tool at all |
78
+ | `--todo-panel` / `--no-todo-panel` | Show or hide the right-hand todo rail. The tool stays registered either way |
79
+ | `--todo-follow <mode>` | What happens when a run ends with steps left: `notify` (default), `auto`, `off` |
80
+ | `--no-skills` | Disable the skill system entirely (no catalog, no skill tools) |
81
+ | `--skill <name>` | Force-load a skill's full body for this run (repeatable) |
82
+ | `--skills-yes` | Approve skill installs for this run (CI / headless) |
83
+ | `--transcript-retain <n>` | Entries kept in memory, clamped to `[200, 20000]`. Older ones are dropped and counted |
84
+ | `--render-governor` / `--no-render-governor` | Adapt the frame interval under load, or pin it at 33 ms |
85
+ | `--max-render-interval <ms>` | Governor ceiling, clamped to `[33, 1000]`. `33` flattens the ladder |
86
+ | `--no-color` | Disable ANSI color |
87
+ | `--quiet` | (print mode) suppress tool/usage lines on stderr |
88
+
89
+ Exit codes: `0` success · `1` agent/runtime error · `2` config/usage error ·
90
+ `130` interrupted.
91
+
92
+ ## Slash commands (interactive)
93
+
94
+ | Command | Action |
95
+ | --- | --- |
96
+ | `/help` | Keybindings + command help |
97
+ | `/model` | Open the model picker |
98
+ | `/settings` | Open the settings screen |
99
+ | `/thinking <level>` | Set the thinking level |
100
+ | `/max-tokens [<n>\|auto\|default]` | Output token cap; with no argument, reports the setting **and** the effective cap for the live model |
101
+ | `/tools` | List active tools |
102
+ | `/clear` | Clear the visible transcript |
103
+ | `/reset` | New conversation |
104
+ | `/cwd [dir]` | Show / change the tool working directory |
105
+ | `/save [file]` | Save the session to JSON |
106
+ | `/resume [file]` | Load a saved session |
107
+ | `/plan [on\|off\|status]` | Toggle plan mode - the keyboard-free equivalent of `Shift+Tab` |
108
+ | `/team [on\|off\|max <n>]` | Team subagents: status and the live roster, the on/off switch, the fan-out width |
109
+ | `/todo [on\|off\|panel on\|off\|follow <mode>\|clear\|continue]` | Todo planning: status, the on/off switch, the rail, follow-through, and picking an unfinished plan back up |
110
+ | `/theme <auto\|warm\|cool\|light>` | Switch the color theme live (persisted) |
111
+ | `/expand [n]` | Expand / collapse the n-th-from-last (default last) tool card |
112
+ | `/copy` | Copy the last answer to the clipboard |
113
+ | `/perf` | What the renderer is doing: frame interval, mounted entries, dropped entries, cache occupancy. `/perf reset` clears the caches and the governor |
114
+ | `/logs` | Show where this session is being logged, and at what level |
115
+ | `/reload` | Re-read `config.json` after editing it in another window (refused mid-run) |
116
+ | `/skills [sub]` | List and manage skills (see below) |
117
+ | `/<skill-name> [args]` | Run an installed skill directly |
118
+ | `/exit` (`/quit`) | Exit |
119
+
120
+ A leading `/` meant literally can be escaped as `//`. Typing `/` opens a
121
+ command palette and `@` opens a file-path completion popup — `Tab` / `→`
122
+ completes, `Up` / `Down` moves the selection, `Esc` closes it.
123
+
124
+ ## Keybindings
125
+
126
+ | Key | Action |
127
+ | --- | --- |
128
+ | `Enter` | Submit (idle) / queue a steering message (running) |
129
+ | `Alt+Enter` / `Shift+Enter` | Insert a newline |
130
+ | `Shift+Tab` | Toggle **plan mode** (`BUILD` <-> `PLAN`). Equivalent: `/plan` |
131
+ | `Esc` | Abort the run / close an overlay / close a popup |
132
+ | `Ctrl+C` ×2 | Exit (first press warns) |
133
+ | `Ctrl+L` | Redraw the frame (clear the screen in inline mode) |
134
+ | `Ctrl+T` | Toggle thinking blocks |
135
+ | `Ctrl+O` | Expand / collapse the most recent tool card |
136
+ | `PgUp` / `PgDn` | Scroll the transcript a page (full-screen mode) |
137
+ | `Shift+↑` / `Shift+↓` | Scroll the transcript a line (full-screen mode) |
138
+ | Mouse wheel | Scroll the transcript (over the input box: prompt history) |
139
+ | `Shift`+wheel | Scroll the transcript a page |
140
+ | `Home` / `End`, `Ctrl+A` / `Ctrl+E` | Cursor to line start / end |
141
+ | `Alt/Ctrl+←` / `→` | Word-wise cursor jump |
142
+ | `Ctrl+W`, `Alt+Backspace` | Delete the previous word |
143
+ | `Ctrl+U` / `Ctrl+K` | Kill to line start / end |
144
+ | `Up` / `Down` | Move between draft lines; recall prompt history at the edges |
145
+ | `?` | Open help (empty input) |
146
+
147
+ In **full-screen mode** the transcript is scrolled by the app itself: `PgUp` /
148
+ `PgDn` and `Shift+↑` / `Shift+↓`. While pinned to the bottom the viewport follows
149
+ new output automatically; once you scroll away the status bar shows `↑N`, a slim
150
+ rail on the right edge shows where you are, and a hint counts the lines below
151
+ you. Submitting a message always re-pins to the newest output. In **inline mode**
152
+ (`--no-fullscreen`) history lives in your terminal's native scrollback, printed
153
+ once via Ink `<Static>`.
154
+
155
+ **The mouse wheel scrolls whatever is under the pointer.** Over the transcript
156
+ it scrolls the transcript three rows per notch (a page with `Shift`); over an
157
+ open overlay it scrolls that overlay; over the input box at the bottom it steps
158
+ prompt history one entry per notch, exactly as `↑` / `↓` do — including the rule
159
+ that an in-progress draft is never overwritten.
160
+
161
+ Two things follow from the app owning the mouse, and they are worth knowing
162
+ before you meet them:
163
+
164
+ - **Selecting text now needs `Shift`+drag** in most terminals. That is the
165
+ terminal's convention for "an application is tracking the mouse", not
166
+ something this CLI can opt out of while still reading wheel events.
167
+ - **`tmux` with `mouse on` keeps the wheel for itself**, so the app never sees
168
+ it. `set -g mouse off` hands it back.
169
+
170
+ Turn the whole thing off with `--no-mouse`, `ARAGON_MOUSE=0`, or
171
+ `aragon config set mouse false`. With mouse support off the wheel simply does
172
+ nothing in full-screen mode — it does not fall back to editing your draft, which
173
+ is what it used to do. Inline mode is unaffected either way.
174
+
175
+ ## Themes
176
+
177
+ Three palettes plus `auto`:
178
+
179
+ | Name | Look |
180
+ | --- | --- |
181
+ | `warm` | Terracotta + amber over warm neutrals. The default (`auto` resolves here). |
182
+ | `cool` | The blue/violet palette that shipped as `dark` through 0.3.x. |
183
+ | `light` | For light terminal backgrounds. |
184
+
185
+ `auto` never guesses `light`: terminals cannot report their background reliably,
186
+ and guessing wrong makes the app unreadable rather than merely wrong-looking.
187
+
188
+ **Migrating from 0.3.x** — `dark` was renamed `cool` when `warm` became the
189
+ default, and the old name still works everywhere: `--theme dark`,
190
+ `aragon config set theme dark`, `/theme dark`, and a config file containing
191
+ `"theme": "dark"` all resolve to `cool`, so a screen you explicitly chose does
192
+ not change under you. The value is rewritten as `cool` the next time the config
193
+ is saved. Only users who never picked a theme see the new default.
194
+
195
+ Density and hints are settable the same three ways: `--compact` / `--no-hints`
196
+ for one run, `aragon config set density compact` / `aragon config set hints false`
197
+ to persist. The composer hint row also shortens to `? help` on its own after a
198
+ few sessions — except while a run is in progress, when it always spells out
199
+ `esc abort` in full.
200
+
201
+ ## Full-screen mode
202
+
203
+ `aragon` takes over the terminal's **alternate screen buffer** — the mechanism
204
+ `vim`, `htop`, and `lazygit` use. Two consequences worth knowing:
205
+
206
+ - Your previous shell output is **covered, not erased**, and returns untouched
207
+ when you exit. Nothing in your scrollback is destroyed.
208
+ - The frame is fixed at `rows - 1` tall, which is what keeps the composer and the
209
+ status bar at the bottom of the screen even on an empty session.
210
+
211
+ On exit the session is replayed into the normal buffer as plain text so the
212
+ conversation survives leaving the screen (`--no-exit-transcript` opts out;
213
+ `/save` still exports the full JSON).
214
+
215
+ It downgrades to the inline renderer automatically when stdout is not a TTY,
216
+ `TERM=dumb`, a CI environment variable is set, or the terminal is under 12 rows
217
+ or 40 columns. `--fullscreen` overrides all of those except the non-TTY check —
218
+ writing screen-control sequences into a pipe or a redirected file is never safe.
219
+ `--no-fullscreen`, `ARAGON_FULLSCREEN=0`, or `aragon config set fullscreen false`
220
+ opt out permanently.
221
+
222
+ The terminal's native scrollback and mouse wheel do not scroll the transcript in
223
+ this mode, and mouse tracking is deliberately left off because enabling it costs
224
+ text selection and copy in most terminals. If a crash ever strands your terminal
225
+ on the alternate screen, `reset` restores it.
226
+
227
+ ## Render performance
228
+
229
+ A long session used to get slower and slower, and past a point it stopped
230
+ responding at all. The cause was structural rather than incidental: Ink has no
231
+ output caching, so every frame re-walked the whole mounted tree, re-measured
232
+ every text node and re-serialised the frame. The cost was therefore proportional
233
+ to **every character the session had ever produced**, not to the characters
234
+ actually on screen — and `transcriptWindow` bounded the entry *count*, which is
235
+ not the same thing when one entry can be fifty thousand lines.
236
+
237
+ Four things changed, and you should not have to think about any of them:
238
+
239
+ - **Off-screen entries are not mounted.** The viewport renders the band you can
240
+ see plus a couple of entries either side, and replaces the rest with two
241
+ spacers of the right height. Scrolling and the `↑N` readout are unchanged.
242
+ - **The expensive pure work is cached.** Syntax highlighting and markdown
243
+ parsing now run once per distinct block instead of once per frame. Themes are
244
+ still applied at render time, so `/theme` takes effect immediately.
245
+ - **The transcript is bounded.** A single answer cannot exceed 256 KiB in the
246
+ view, and `transcriptRetain` caps how many entries are kept. Both bounds
247
+ report what they removed rather than dropping it silently.
248
+ - **The frame interval adapts.** If a frame is genuinely expensive, updates
249
+ coalesce into a wider window — 33 ms up to a 320 ms ceiling — so the terminal
250
+ stays responsive to typing and to `Ctrl+C`. A muted **`eco`** chip appears in
251
+ the status bar whenever this is in effect: the stream getting chunkier is
252
+ something you should be able to see a reason for.
253
+
254
+ `/perf` reports exactly what the renderer is doing:
255
+
256
+ ```
257
+ render rung 2 - interval 80ms - last commit 61ms - eco
258
+ transcript 4213 entries - 1000 retained - 3213 dropped - 38 mounted
259
+ heights 412 cached - 6 estimated - cols 132
260
+ caches md 178 (1.9MB) - hl 96 (1.4MB) - lines 340
261
+ mode fullscreen - viewport 44 rows - offset 0
262
+ ```
263
+
264
+ `/perf reset` clears the render caches and returns the governor to its fastest
265
+ rung. `--no-render-governor` (or `renderGovernor: false`, or
266
+ `ARAGON_RENDER_GOVERNOR=0`) turns the adaptation off entirely; the output is
267
+ identical, just heavier under load.
268
+
269
+ **Inline mode** (`--no-fullscreen`, `TERM=dumb`, CI, a very small terminal) gets
270
+ one extra guarantee. Ink repaints the *entire session history* on every frame
271
+ once a live entry grows taller than the terminal, which is a genuine freeze
272
+ rather than a slowdown. The live region is now clamped to stay below that
273
+ threshold, with a `... N earlier lines` marker naming what is deferred; the
274
+ entry prints **in full** into your scrollback the moment it finishes.
275
+
276
+ ## Plan mode
277
+
278
+ `aragon` has two postures, and `Shift+Tab` switches between them. `/plan` does
279
+ the same thing for terminals that swallow the key (see below).
280
+
281
+ | Mode | What it means |
282
+ | --- | --- |
283
+ | `BUILD` | The default, and unchanged from earlier versions: you ask, the agent does it. |
284
+ | `PLAN` | Research and design only. The agent reads, asks you the decisions it cannot settle by reading, and submits a plan for approval before anything is written. |
285
+
286
+ `BUILD` is right for "rename this symbol". `PLAN` is right for "add multi-tenant
287
+ support" — anything where you want to see and steer the *approach* before a
288
+ single byte changes.
289
+
290
+ ### What plan mode actually stops
291
+
292
+ In `PLAN`, five tools are refused at the tool boundary: `write_file`,
293
+ `edit_file`, `bash`, `skill_install` and `skill_create`. That is a property of
294
+ the wiring, not a promise in a prompt — the refusal happens before the tool runs,
295
+ so the badge is telling you something that is structurally true.
296
+
297
+ **`bash` is refused in full, `git status` included.** This is the most likely
298
+ question this feature generates, so: there is no reliable way to classify a shell
299
+ string as read-only, and a gate that is right 95 % of the time is worse than one
300
+ that is always right, because you stop trusting the badge. Use `read_file`,
301
+ `list_dir`, `glob` and `grep`, which stay available; the refusal message names
302
+ them so the agent has somewhere to go. There is no allowlist and there will not
303
+ be one built out of substring matching.
304
+
305
+ Everything else still works: reading, searching, loading skills, and asking you
306
+ questions.
307
+
308
+ ### The two plan-mode tools
309
+
310
+ - **`ask_user`** renders a keyboard-driven wizard: 1–5 questions, 2–4 options
311
+ each, exactly one marked `RECOMMENDED`, plus an `Other…` free-text option.
312
+ `↑`/`↓` choose, `Enter` confirms and advances, `←` goes back, `Esc` cancels.
313
+ Pressing `Enter` through the whole wizard accepts every recommendation, which
314
+ is a deliberate "use your judgement" path rather than an accident. A last
315
+ screen lets you review before submitting.
316
+ - **`submit_plan`** renders the plan as a scrollable card: `a` approves, `r`
317
+ opens a one-line feedback field (`Enter` sends it, `←` goes back to the card),
318
+ `Esc` dismisses. **Approving flips the session to `BUILD` immediately and the
319
+ same run continues straight into implementation** — you do not have to re-ask.
320
+
321
+ Cancelling either one is not an error. The agent is told to proceed on stated
322
+ assumptions rather than to retry.
323
+
324
+ **Dismissing a plan is not how you stop.** `Esc` on a plan card asks for a
325
+ *better* plan — the agent is told to refine it and submit again — so a model that
326
+ keeps submitting keeps getting cards. To stop the run itself, **press `Esc`
327
+ twice**: the first closes the card, the second aborts the run. `Ctrl+C` twice
328
+ still exits the session outright.
329
+
330
+ ### Where the mode is shown
331
+
332
+ The status bar always names a non-default mode (`PLAN`, or `PLAN → BUILD` while
333
+ a switch is pending), including on short terminals, with `--no-hints`, and in
334
+ inline mode. The composer additionally shows a `PLAN` chip on its hint row and
335
+ tints its border, where there is room for it.
336
+
337
+ ### Switching mid-run
338
+
339
+ Tightening applies at once; loosening waits. Pressing `Shift+Tab` toward `PLAN`
340
+ during a run takes effect immediately — you pressed it *because* the agent is
341
+ about to do something. Pressing it toward `BUILD` during a run is **deferred to
342
+ the end of the run**, so a session you launched under a read-only guarantee
343
+ cannot start writing files because of one stray keypress. The status bar shows
344
+ `PLAN → BUILD` while that is pending. Approving a plan is the one exception, and
345
+ it is an informed act rather than a stray keypress.
346
+
347
+ ### If `Shift+Tab` does nothing
348
+
349
+ Some multiplexers and remote-desktop stacks never send `CSI Z`. `/plan`,
350
+ `/plan on`, `/plan off` and `/plan status` are first-class equivalents, and
351
+ `--plan` / `ARAGON_PLAN=1` / `planModeDefault` cover the startup case.
352
+
353
+ ### Headless
354
+
355
+ `aragon -p --plan "add SSO"` is a useful combination: the read-only gate still
356
+ applies, so it means *"tell me how you would do this, and do not touch my
357
+ repository"*. No question or plan tool is registered there — there is nobody to
358
+ ask — and the agent writes the finished plan as its final message in markdown.
359
+
360
+ ## TODO planning
361
+
362
+ For work with three or more distinct steps the agent keeps a **visible plan**:
363
+ it writes a checklist with the `todo_write` tool, marks exactly one item as in
364
+ progress, and ticks it off before starting the next. In full-screen mode that
365
+ list is rendered as a right-hand rail, about a fifth of the terminal wide.
366
+
367
+ ```
368
+ transcript ... | TODO 2/7
369
+ | ####------
370
+ |
371
+ | v 1 Read the reducer
372
+ | v 2 Design the store
373
+ | > 3 Wiring the rail into
374
+ | AppShell
375
+ | o 4 Add the panel-rows test
376
+ | o 5 Update the README
377
+ | +2 more
378
+ ```
379
+
380
+ Ask for something small and nothing appears. The agent is told, in its system
381
+ prompt, **not** to use the tool for anything it can finish in one or two steps,
382
+ for a question, or for a search with no work attached — and a one-item list
383
+ against an empty plan is refused outright. A session that never plans has
384
+ byte-identical layout to a build without this feature.
385
+
386
+ **The list is a projection of what the model believes**, so nothing that does
387
+ not also tell the model may change it:
388
+
389
+ - `/clear` wipes the transcript but not the conversation, so the plan stays.
390
+ - `/reset` clears the conversation, so the plan goes with it.
391
+ - `/save` writes the list and `/resume` restores it. Resuming a session that has
392
+ no list clears the current one, rather than leaving a plan on screen whose
393
+ conversation has just been replaced.
394
+ - A finished plan is dropped at the START of your next message, so you still get
395
+ to see `7/7 done`. An unfinished one survives "continue" / "now do the rest",
396
+ and is dropped after three unrelated turns rather than holding a fifth of the
397
+ screen for the rest of the session.
398
+
399
+ ### When a run ends with steps left
400
+
401
+ By default you get a notice and `/todo continue` — nothing auto-continues on
402
+ your behalf. `/todo continue` no longer says "continue the remaining items"; it
403
+ sends the model the numbered list of steps that are still open, so a plan that
404
+ scrolled out of the context window some turns ago is still followed exactly.
405
+
406
+ `/todo follow auto` (or `--todo-follow auto`, or `todo.followThrough` in
407
+ `config.json`) turns that into an actual loop: the CLI announces
408
+ `Continuing with 4 remaining steps in 3s - Esc to stop.`, waits, and then sends
409
+ the continuation itself. Two structural limits bound it, and neither is a
410
+ setting:
411
+
412
+ - A continuation that completes no step buys exactly **one** more attempt.
413
+ After that you get a sentence and the keyboard back.
414
+ - A single plan is continued at most **25** times however productive it looks.
415
+ A re-plan forgives the first counter but never the second, so a model that
416
+ reshapes its list every turn cannot lift the ceiling.
417
+
418
+ `Esc` during the grace window cancels; so does typing anything. A run that ended
419
+ with an **error** never auto-continues in any mode — you get a warning instead.
420
+ A run **you** aborted with `Esc` now says nothing at all, where it used to
421
+ report what you had just interrupted.
422
+
423
+ `/todo follow off` is the third mode: no notice, no continuation, silence.
424
+
425
+ Under `-p` there is no grace window (there is nobody there to use it), so the
426
+ two counters are the whole of the protection. `[todo] continuing (3 steps left)`
427
+ goes to stderr before each continuation and `[todo] 3 steps unfinished` when it
428
+ stops; both are suppressed by `--quiet`, and an unfinished plan never changes
429
+ the exit code.
430
+
431
+ ### Inline mode
432
+
433
+ Inline mode has no fixed frame and therefore no rail, but it does get a one-row
434
+ plan strip under the transcript:
435
+
436
+ ```
437
+ todo 3/7 > Adding the rail to AppShell +2 done
438
+ ```
439
+
440
+ It never wraps and never grows past one row, so the composer does not move. The
441
+ `+N done` suffix drops below 80 columns and the counter compacts to `[3/7]`
442
+ below 100, matching the status bar. `--no-todo-panel` hides the strip as well as
443
+ the rail.
444
+
445
+ `/todo` reports status and switches things off: `/todo off` unregisters nothing
446
+ (the tool list is fixed when the session starts) but stops the tool working and
447
+ drops the guidance from the system prompt, while `/todo panel off` keeps the
448
+ planning discipline and hides the column — which is what you want with a screen
449
+ reader, and what `--no-todo-panel` does for a whole session. Under `-p` the plan
450
+ is written to stderr as `[todo] 3/7 <step>` lines, suppressed by `--quiet`.
451
+
452
+ The rail is not mounted below 80 columns, while an overlay is open, in inline
453
+ mode, or when the viewport is too short to say anything useful; the transcript
454
+ keeps at least 62 columns at every width. In those cases the counter appears in
455
+ the status bar instead, and the checklist is still written into the transcript
456
+ as one card per turn.
457
+
458
+ ## Built-in tools
459
+
460
+ `read_file`, `write_file`, `edit_file`, `list_dir`, `glob`, `grep`, `bash` — all
461
+ at full permission. Paths resolve against the session working directory. The
462
+ per-tool timeout and 100 KB output truncation are enforced by the core executor;
463
+ `bash`'s `timeout` param only shrinks within that ceiling.
464
+
465
+ When skills are enabled, four more are added — the two read tools `skill` and
466
+ `skill_find`, then the two mutating ones `skill_install` and `skill_create` (see
467
+ below). `--no-skills` removes them again. Updating a skill is deliberately not
468
+ among them; that is a `aragon skills update` decision for you, not the model.
469
+
470
+ With team mode on — which is the default — one more is added: `task`, the
471
+ delegation tool (see below). `--no-team` removes it again.
472
+
473
+ With todo planning on — also the default — one more is added: `todo_write`, the
474
+ planning tool (see above). `--no-todo` removes it again.
475
+
476
+ ## Team subagents
477
+
478
+ The agent can hand parts of a job to short-lived **subagents** that run in
479
+ parallel, then read one combined report of what they each found. It decides for
480
+ itself whether to delegate; a session that never calls `task` is the session
481
+ that existed before this feature.
482
+
483
+ ```
484
+ > read the auth middleware, map the route table, and check the migration
485
+
486
+ ◆ team 2 running · 1 done · 84s ✉ 1
487
+ ⠋ a1 read the auth middleware tool: grep 22.1s
488
+ ⠙ a2 map the route table thinking 31.6s
489
+ ✔ a3 check the migration done 4 turns 18.2s
490
+ ```
491
+
492
+ **What a subagent is.** A full agent with its own message history, the same
493
+ tools and the same working directory — but no memory of your conversation, so
494
+ its brief has to be self-contained. It cannot delegate further (depth is capped
495
+ at one by construction) and it cannot ask you anything.
496
+
497
+ **Delegate wide, not deep.** Two to four subagents is the usual size. The
498
+ default cap is 5 per dispatch and 3 in flight at once; the hard maximum is 10
499
+ and no config file can raise it. `maxConcurrent` is separate from `maxSubagents`
500
+ on purpose: five simultaneous streams against one API key is a reliable way to
501
+ collect rate-limit errors, and each one would land in the report as a failed
502
+ subagent.
503
+
504
+ **The report.** One text result: a header with the ok/failed counts, aggregate
505
+ tokens and cost, then one section per subagent with its status, timing, the
506
+ files it wrote and its own final summary. A failed subagent never fails the
507
+ dispatch — partial results are the normal outcome of a fan-out. When two
508
+ subagents wrote the same file the header says so, phrased as a warning rather
509
+ than a fact: the file list is derived from `write_file` / `edit_file`, so a
510
+ write made through `bash` is invisible to it.
511
+
512
+ **Talking to each other.** Subagents get two extra tools, `team_send` and
513
+ `team_wait`. Messages are delivered by attaching them to the recipient's next
514
+ tool result, so nobody has to poll and nobody's work is interrupted. The limits
515
+ are the point rather than an afterthought: **6 messages per subagent, one every
516
+ 15 seconds, 24 per dispatch**, a broadcast costing two. Every refusal is a plain
517
+ result naming the limit, never an error — an error reads as a malfunction and
518
+ invites a retry, which is the behaviour the limits exist to prevent.
519
+
520
+ **What you see.** While a dispatch runs, the roster above sits between the
521
+ transcript and the composer and the status bar carries `agents 3/5` (`[3]` under
522
+ 100 columns). Both disappear when it finishes and the transcript keeps a card
523
+ with the per-agent results; `Ctrl+O` expands it to their summaries. Under `-p`
524
+ the same transitions go to stderr as `[team] a1 ok 22.1s 7 tools` lines, and the
525
+ children's tokens are folded into the `[usage]` footer.
526
+
527
+ **Interaction with the other subsystems.**
528
+
529
+ - **Plan mode reaches one level down.** In PLAN, every subagent is built with
530
+ the same read-only gate, so `write_file` / `edit_file` / `bash` are refused
531
+ inside them too. Parallel research is plan mode's best use, so `task` itself
532
+ is allowed. A single subagent can be pinned read-only with `readOnly: true`
533
+ even in a BUILD session — the field can only ever tighten.
534
+ - **A skill's `allowed-tools` ceiling reaches one level down too**, so
535
+ delegating is not a way around it. Subagents get `skill_find` but not `skill`:
536
+ loading a skill mutates a turn-scoped registry the lead owns, and three
537
+ subagents doing it at once would narrow what the lead may do next in a way
538
+ nothing would report. Always-on skills still reach them.
539
+ - **`--confirm`** queues subagent confirmations one at a time, labelled with the
540
+ subagent that is asking (`[a2] Write: src/routes.ts`).
541
+ - **Logs.** `dispatch_start` and `dispatch_end` are recorded at `info` with the
542
+ ok / failed / aborted counts and aggregate usage; phase transitions at
543
+ `debug`. A `team_send` subject is recorded, never its body; a subagent's brief
544
+ and summary only at `trace`.
545
+
546
+ **`Esc`** aborts the whole dispatch — every subagent within a couple of seconds
547
+ — and the report comes back marked `ABORTED` with whatever was finished.
548
+
549
+ ## Skills
550
+
551
+ A skill is a reusable expert procedure stored on disk: a directory containing a
552
+ `SKILL.md` (YAML frontmatter + Markdown body) and, optionally, `reference/`,
553
+ `scripts/` and `assets/`. The format matches Claude Code's, so an existing
554
+ community skill directory works as-is.
555
+
556
+ ### Progressive disclosure
557
+
558
+ This is the part that makes skills cheap enough to install a lot of:
559
+
560
+ | Level | What the model gets | When |
561
+ | --- | --- | --- |
562
+ | 1 | Name, scope, and a one-line "what + when" | Always, in the system prompt. Whole catalog capped at 6 000 bytes. |
563
+ | 2 | The full `SKILL.md` body + a list of bundled files | Only when the model calls `skill(name=…)` |
564
+ | 3 | The bundled files themselves | Only when it reads them with `read_file` / `bash` |
565
+
566
+ A skill costs a line in the prompt rather than its whole body, so installing
567
+ many of them stays cheap. The model decides on its own whether a task matches a
568
+ skill — you do not have to name one.
569
+
570
+ At Level 2 the file list is split into what to read and what to run, and carries
571
+ the skill's absolute root so the model can build real paths. The accompanying
572
+ guidance is **platform-specific**: on Windows the `bash` tool runs `cmd.exe`, so
573
+ the model is told to run `.py` with `python <abs path>` and that a `.sh` file
574
+ will not work — rather than the previous, flatly untrue "run scripts with bash".
575
+ `aragon skills doctor` warns when a skill bundles only scripts for the other
576
+ shell.
577
+
578
+ **How many fit in Level 1 depends on your descriptions, and on the language they
579
+ are written in.** The 6 000-byte ceiling is measured in UTF-8 bytes: a terse
580
+ English description costs roughly 180 bytes a line (~30 skills), while a Chinese
581
+ one at the 220-character cap can cost 660 (~10 skills). Past that point the
582
+ catalog truncates.
583
+
584
+ Truncation is not a dead end. Entries are ranked before it happens, and what
585
+ falls off is still reachable:
586
+
587
+ - **Ranking**: scope first (`env` > `project` > `user` > `bundled`), then how
588
+ recently and how often you have actually used each skill. A skill you ran an
589
+ hour ago outranks one you have never used, so what survives truncation is what
590
+ you actually work with — not whatever sorts first alphabetically.
591
+ - **`skill_find`**: when the catalog *does* truncate, it says so and names this
592
+ tool, which searches everything installed by name, description and keyword.
593
+ It only ever searches **what is already on this machine** — it never reaches
594
+ the network and never suggests something to install.
595
+
596
+ Both are off the critical path: with no usage data recorded the order is exactly
597
+ the plain scope-then-name order, and `skill_find` is only advertised in the
598
+ prompt when something was actually omitted.
599
+
600
+ ### Using them
601
+
602
+ ```bash
603
+ aragon skills list [--sort=recent] # what is installed
604
+ aragon skills info <name> # version, path, provenance, files
605
+ aragon skills install <source> [--yes] # dir | git repo | https .md / .zip
606
+ aragon skills install github:owner/repo#v1.2.0
607
+ aragon skills update <name> [--yes] [--force] [--dry-run]
608
+ aragon skills update --all [--yes] # every skill that has an upstream
609
+ aragon skills update --check [<name>|--all] # is there a newer version?
610
+ aragon skills remove <name> [--yes]
611
+ aragon skills create <name> --description "what + when" [--yes]
612
+ aragon skills path # user skills directory
613
+ aragon skills doctor # validate + detect tampering
614
+ aragon skills usage [--json] # local use counters
615
+ aragon skills usage --reset --yes # delete them
616
+ aragon skills trust <dir> # allow a project skills directory
617
+ ```
618
+
619
+ #### Updating
620
+
621
+ `update` re-fetches a skill from the source recorded in its install manifest,
622
+ keeping `installedAt` and recording `updatedAt` + `previousVersion`.
623
+
624
+ - **Local edits are protected.** If you have changed an installed skill, `update`
625
+ refuses and names the files, *before downloading anything*. `--force`
626
+ overwrites them — and **`--force` discards your edits**; copy them out first.
627
+ The replaced directory is parked under the staging trash, so a mistake is
628
+ recoverable by hand.
629
+ - **The host allowlist is re-checked** against your *current*
630
+ `skills.allowedHosts`, not the one in force when you installed. Narrowing that
631
+ list therefore also constrains updates.
632
+ - **`--all` never stops on one failure.** Skills that cannot be updated
633
+ (hand-authored, bundled, or locally modified) are reported as `skipped`, which
634
+ is not an error; only a genuine I/O or validation failure exits non-zero.
635
+ - **`--check` reports `unknown` freely.** It compares the commit recorded at
636
+ install time against `git ls-remote`, so it can only answer for git sources
637
+ installed by a version that records one. Anything else is honestly reported as
638
+ unknown rather than guessed.
639
+ - **The model cannot call `update`.** Installing is something you pointed it at;
640
+ swapping working instructions for different ones is a maintenance decision and
641
+ stays with you.
642
+
643
+ Interactively the same lives under `/skills …` (`/skills update <name> [--force]`,
644
+ `/skills update --all`, `/skills list --sort=recent`, `/skills policy [mode]`,
645
+ `/skills unload`, `/skills usage [--reset]`). Every usable skill also becomes a
646
+ slash command:
647
+
648
+ ```
649
+ /pdf-forms invoice.pdf --flatten
650
+ ```
651
+
652
+ Both delivery paths share `skills.bodyMaxBytes`, so an oversized `SKILL.md` is
653
+ truncated with a visible marker rather than submitted whole. Loading the same
654
+ skill twice in one conversation returns a short digest (description, file list,
655
+ guidance) instead of a second copy of the body; the model can ask for the full
656
+ text back with `skill(name="…", force=true)`.
657
+
658
+ Bodies may use `$ARGUMENTS` and `$1..$9`; `$$` is a literal `$`. If a skill
659
+ declares no placeholder, the arguments are appended under an `## Arguments`
660
+ heading instead. Where a skill's name collides with a built-in command, the
661
+ **built-in wins** and the skill is reachable as `/skill:<name>`.
662
+
663
+ ### Where skills come from
664
+
665
+ Four scopes, later ones overriding earlier ones by name:
666
+
667
+ | Scope | Location | Writable |
668
+ | --- | --- | --- |
669
+ | `bundled` | `<package>/skills/` | no |
670
+ | `user` | `aragon skills path` | yes — the default install target |
671
+ | `project` | `<cwd>/.aragon/skills/` | yes |
672
+ | `project` | `<cwd>/.claude/skills/` | no — read-only Claude Code interop |
673
+ | `env` | `ARAGON_SKILLS_PATH` (`:`/`;`-separated) | no |
674
+
675
+ A shadowed skill is not lost: `/skills` shows it as `~shadowed by <scope>`.
676
+
677
+ ### Frontmatter
678
+
679
+ ```yaml
680
+ ---
681
+ name: pdf-forms # required, kebab-case, ≤ 64 chars
682
+ description: Fill, flatten and validate AcroForm PDFs. Use when the task
683
+ mentions PDF forms, field filling, or flattening a fillable PDF.
684
+ version: 1.2.0
685
+ license: MIT
686
+ author: Jane Doe
687
+ homepage: https://github.com/jane/pdf-forms
688
+ keywords: [pdf, forms]
689
+ allowed-tools: [read_file, bash] # enforced as a per-turn tool ceiling (union)
690
+ activation: auto # auto | always | manual
691
+ ---
692
+ ```
693
+
694
+ `description` is the only text a model sees before deciding to load the skill,
695
+ so it has to say both what the skill does and when to use it. Unknown keys are
696
+ preserved, so a newer Claude Code field will not break parsing.
697
+
698
+ `activation: always` injects the body into every session's system prompt (12 000
699
+ bytes total across all such skills); `manual` keeps it out of the catalog so it
700
+ runs only when explicitly invoked.
701
+
702
+ ### Security model — and its limits
703
+
704
+ Be clear about what this does and does not buy you:
705
+
706
+ - **Installing requires a human.** The approval gate checks whether a person is
707
+ actually reachable *before* asking, and refuses when nobody is. Under `-p`
708
+ there is no TUI and therefore no approver, so `skill_install` fails with an
709
+ actionable message instead of writing to disk unattended. Opt out
710
+ deliberately with `--skills-yes` or `skills.requireApproval=false`.
711
+ - **Project directories need trusting once.** Cloning an unfamiliar repository
712
+ does not grant it the right to inject instructions into your session.
713
+ - **Nothing is executed at install time.** No postinstall, no dependency
714
+ install; the executable bit is not preserved. Scripts run only when the model
715
+ invokes `bash`.
716
+ - **Archives are gated on real bytes** — total size, per-entry size, compression
717
+ ratio and entry count, all abortable mid-extraction. Path traversal,
718
+ absolute paths, symlinks and Windows device names are refused.
719
+ - **Git is never run through a shell**, and ref / owner / repo fragments are
720
+ whitelisted and refused if they start with `-`.
721
+ - **Third-party text cannot break out of its prompt block**: angle brackets in
722
+ descriptions, bodies and file names are neutralized before rendering.
723
+
724
+ - **A changed `SKILL.md` is noticed at load time.** Every install records a
725
+ sha256; discovery re-checks the one file that reaches the model's context and
726
+ flags it as `!modified` if it no longer matches what you approved. See
727
+ `skills.integrity` below.
728
+ - **Concurrent installs cannot corrupt a skill.** Writes take a per-directory
729
+ advisory lock, so two `aragon` processes installing at once queue instead of
730
+ interleaving their atomic-replace steps. *Limit:* the lock relies on exclusive
731
+ file creation, which is not reliably atomic on every NFS implementation. It
732
+ self-expires after 60 seconds and waits at most 5, so the worst case there is
733
+ no mutual exclusion — never a hang.
734
+
735
+ What it does **not** do: there is **no sandbox**. Approval blocks *silent*
736
+ installation; it does not make a skill you approved safe. A skill you accept can
737
+ contain adversarial instructions, and its scripts run with your full user
738
+ permissions — the same trust model as pasting text into the prompt and the same
739
+ as the `bash` tool. `/skills info` records provenance and a sha256 per file so
740
+ you can audit what arrived and notice if it changed. The integrity check answers
741
+ "is this still the file I approved?", **not** "is this file from someone I
742
+ trust" — there is no signing and no key distribution.
743
+
744
+ `allowed-tools` **is** enforced now (see below), but read the next section before
745
+ treating it as a permission boundary: it is blast-radius control, not a security
746
+ boundary, and a skill can widen its own ceiling by loading another skill.
747
+
748
+ ### The tool ceiling (`allowed-tools`)
749
+
750
+ A skill that declares `allowed-tools` constrains which tools the model may use
751
+ **for the rest of the current turn**:
752
+
753
+ ```yaml
754
+ allowed-tools: [read_file, write_file]
755
+ ```
756
+
757
+ - **Scope is one turn.** The ceiling appears when a skill is loaded — by the
758
+ model calling `skill(...)`, or by you running `/<skill-name>` — and it is gone
759
+ as soon as you send the next message. A skill you used this morning does not
760
+ restrict unrelated work this afternoon.
761
+ - **Read-only tools are always allowed**, declared or not: `read_file`,
762
+ `list_dir`, `glob`, `grep`, plus `skill` and `skill_find`. What the declaration
763
+ actually controls is the five tools that change something — `write_file`,
764
+ `edit_file`, `bash`, `skill_install`, `skill_create`.
765
+ - **Claude Code names work.** `[Read, Bash, MultiEdit]` maps onto this host's
766
+ `read_file` / `bash` / `edit_file`. Tools that exist there but not here
767
+ (`WebFetch`, `Task`, `TodoWrite`, …) are ignored rather than treated as errors.
768
+ - **A name we cannot resolve waives the whole declaration**, and says so. One
769
+ typo means that skill imposes no ceiling at all — never a narrower one you did
770
+ not write. `aragon skills doctor` reports these up front.
771
+ - **`activation: always` skills never impose a ceiling.** They are ambient
772
+ reference material, not a procedure you chose to run.
773
+
774
+ Three modes, via `skills.toolPolicy` (default `enforce`),
775
+ `aragon --skill-tool-policy <mode>` for one run, or `/skills policy <mode>` for
776
+ the current session (which takes effect immediately, even mid-turn):
777
+
778
+ | Mode | Behaviour |
779
+ | --- | --- |
780
+ | `enforce` | The call is refused; the model is told what it may use instead. |
781
+ | `warn` | The call runs, and you get one notice per tool per turn. |
782
+ | `off` | No ceiling, and nothing about `allowed-tools` reaches the model. |
783
+
784
+ `/skills unload` drops the ceiling for the current turn. It does **not** remove
785
+ skill text already in the conversation — nothing can.
786
+
787
+ **What this is and is not.** It is **blast-radius control, not a security
788
+ boundary**. The declaration is written by the skill's own author, so a malicious
789
+ skill can simply declare `[bash]`. Its value is that a declaration is now
790
+ binding: you can read one in `/skills info` and decide whether to install, and an
791
+ honest author's `[read_file]` means a "while you're there, run `rm -rf`" line
792
+ smuggled into that skill's text — or into a file it tells the model to read —
793
+ cannot execute.
794
+
795
+ **And a known limit:** the ceiling is a **union** across every skill loaded this
796
+ turn, and `skill` is always available. So a skill can widen its own ceiling by
797
+ instructing the model to load a second, more permissive skill. This is not
798
+ blocked — blocking it would either strand the model inside a skill it cannot
799
+ escape, or break every multi-skill workflow — but every widening is printed to
800
+ the transcript:
801
+
802
+ ```
803
+ Tool ceiling widened by skill "skill-creator": +write_file, +skill_create
804
+ ```
805
+
806
+ So it stops the smuggled instruction; it does not stop a skill that deliberately
807
+ teaches the model to reach for another one.
808
+
809
+ ### Usage counters
810
+
811
+ To rank the catalog, the CLI keeps a small file next to your skills directory:
812
+
813
+ ```jsonc
814
+ // <aragon skills path>/../skill-usage.json
815
+ { "schema": 1, "skills": { "deploy-preview": { "useCount": 12, "lastUsedAt": 1785050000000 } } }
816
+ ```
817
+
818
+ **It contains the skill name, a count, and a timestamp. Nothing else** — no
819
+ arguments, no conversation content, no working directory, no machine identifier.
820
+ It is never transmitted anywhere, by anything. Delete it whenever you like; the
821
+ only effect is that the catalog falls back to plain scope-then-name order. Set
822
+ `skills.usageTracking=false` to switch it off entirely, after which the file is
823
+ neither read nor written.
824
+
825
+ Automatically injected `activation: always` skills are deliberately **not**
826
+ counted — they load on every turn, so counting them would say nothing about what
827
+ you actually use.
828
+
829
+ ## Configuration
830
+
831
+ Config is layered (highest priority last): **defaults → user config file →
832
+ env / `.env` → CLI flags**.
833
+
834
+ - **Env / `.env`**: `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, `OPENAI_API_KEY`,
835
+ `GOOGLE_API_KEY` / `GEMINI_API_KEY`, plus `ARAGON_PROVIDER`, `ARAGON_MODEL`,
836
+ `ARAGON_BASE_URL`, `ARAGON_THINKING`,
837
+ `ARAGON_MAX_TOKENS` (a number, or `auto` / `0` for the per-model ceiling),
838
+ `ARAGON_THEME`,
839
+ `ARAGON_FULLSCREEN`, `ARAGON_PLAN` (`1` starts in plan mode),
840
+ `ARAGON_TEAM` (`0` disables team subagents), `ARAGON_TEAM_MAX` (fan-out width),
841
+ `ARAGON_TODO` (`0` disables todo planning entirely),
842
+ `ARAGON_TODO_FOLLOW` (`notify` / `auto` / `off`),
843
+ `ARAGON_SKILLS` (`0` disables), `ARAGON_SKILLS_PATH`,
844
+ `ARAGON_SKILLS_DISABLED` (comma-separated names), `ARAGON_LOG_LEVEL`,
845
+ `ARAGON_LOG_FILE` (`0` disables), `ARAGON_LOG_DIR`,
846
+ `ARAGON_TRANSCRIPT_RETAIN`, `ARAGON_RENDER_GOVERNOR` (`0` disables),
847
+ `ARAGON_MAX_RENDER_INTERVAL_MS`.
848
+ `ARAGON_HOME` is the exception that **cannot** come from `.env`: it is read
849
+ before any `.env` is loaded. See [Files & logs](#files--logs).
850
+ - **User config file** (`aragon config path`): JSON, written `0600` on POSIX.
851
+ Holds provider / model / keys and your preferences, and nothing else — the
852
+ prompts you type and the counters behind one-time notices live in their own
853
+ files (see [Files & logs](#files--logs)). Keys are masked in the UI and never
854
+ logged. It lives in your home directory — see [Files & logs](#files--logs) —
855
+ and editing it by hand is supported: `aragon config edit` opens it, and an
856
+ invalid edit is reported rather than silently resetting every setting.
857
+
858
+ | Config key | Default | Meaning |
859
+ | --- | --- | --- |
860
+ | `maxTokens` | `64000` | Output token cap, clamped to `[256, 200000]`. `null` means **auto** — use each model's own ceiling, never above 64000. Absent means the default. See [Output token limits](#output-token-limits). |
861
+ | `fullscreen` | `true` | Use the full-screen TUI (still subject to the automatic downgrades). Setting it to `false` opts out permanently; leaving it `true` is *not* a force — only `--fullscreen` / `ARAGON_FULLSCREEN=1` override the heuristics. |
862
+ | `exitTranscript` | `true` | Replay a plain-text session summary after exiting (full-screen only). |
863
+ | `transcriptWindow` | `1000` | How far back you can scroll, clamped to `[50, 20000]`. Entries beyond it collapse into one line. It is no longer a rendering budget: the viewport is virtualised, so off-screen entries are not laid out at all. |
864
+ | `transcriptRetain` | `1000` | Entries kept in memory, clamped to `[200, 20000]` and raised to `transcriptWindow` if the two conflict — with a startup notice saying so, because retaining less than you can scroll to would otherwise make part of the horizon quietly unreachable. Older entries are dropped, counted, and reported by `/perf` and by the exit replay. |
865
+ | `renderGovernor` | `true` | Widen the streaming frame interval when a frame is genuinely expensive. See [Render performance](#render-performance). |
866
+ | `maxRenderIntervalMs` | `320` | Ceiling of the governor ladder, clamped to `[33, 1000]`. `33` flattens it to the pre-0.6 cadence without disabling the mechanism. |
867
+ | `planModeDefault` | `false` | Start every session in plan mode. `--no-plan` still overrides it for a single run. |
868
+ | `planModeMaxAskRounds` | `4` | `ask_user` rounds allowed per user message, clamped to `[1, 10]`. The counter resets on your next message; steering does **not** reset it. |
869
+ | `planModeHumanTimeoutMs` | `1800000` | Ceiling on a single question / plan wait, clamped to `[60000, 7200000]`. Thirty minutes is far outside "went to get coffee", but a ceiling has to exist so an unattended terminal cannot wedge a CI job forever. |
870
+ | `historyEnabled` | `true` | Record submitted prompts to `prompt-history.jsonl` for `↑` recall. Setting it to `false` stops new writes; it does not delete what is already stored (that is `aragon history clear --yes`) and does not stop reading. See [Prompt history](#prompt-history). |
871
+ | `team.enabled` | `true` | Master switch for team subagents. `false` means the `task` tool is never registered — `/team on` in such a session saves the setting for next launch and says so, rather than advertising a tool that is not there. |
872
+ | `team.maxSubagents` | `5` | Subagents per dispatch, clamped to `[1, 10]`. The 10 is the hard ceiling and is enforced twice — on the config value and again on what the model asks for — so hand-editing this file cannot raise it. |
873
+ | `team.maxConcurrent` | `3` | Subagents in flight at once, clamped to `[1, 10]` and capped at `maxSubagents`. A separate knob because provider rate limits are a different constraint from context economics. |
874
+ | `team.subagentTimeoutMs` | `300000` | One subagent's wall clock before it is aborted, clamped to `[30000, 1800000]`. A wedged subagent dies on its own ceiling without taking the dispatch with it. |
875
+ | `team.dispatchTimeoutMs` | `900000` | The whole dispatch's wall clock, clamped to `[60000, 3600000]`. |
876
+ | `team.maxTurnsPerSubagent` | `24` | Runaway-loop cap, clamped to `[4, 100]`. A subagent stopped here is reported as `stopped: turn cap reached`, with whatever it had produced. |
877
+ | `todo.enabled` | `true` | Master switch for todo planning. `false` means the `todo_write` tool is never registered — `/todo on` in such a session saves the setting for next launch and says so, rather than advertising a tool that is not there. |
878
+ | `todo.panel` | `true` | Render the right-hand rail (and, in inline mode, the one-row plan strip). Independent of `todo.enabled` on purpose: a screen-reader user wants the planning discipline without the column, and the system prompt varies one sentence accordingly. |
879
+ | `todo.followThrough` | `"notify"` | What happens when a run ends with steps left. `notify` says so and stops; `auto` continues the plan after a 3-second grace window, bounded by two structural limits (one fruitless attempt, 25 continuations per plan) that are deliberately **not** settings; `off` is silent. An unrecognized value falls back to `notify`. |
880
+ | `skills.enabled` | `true` | Master switch for the skill system. |
881
+ | `skills.requireApproval` | `true` | Require a human to approve `skill_install` / `skill_create`. |
882
+ | `skills.catalogMaxBytes` | `6000` | Level 1 catalog ceiling, in UTF-8 **bytes**, clamped to `[500, 40000]`. |
883
+ | `skills.bodyMaxBytes` | `30000` | Level 2 body ceiling, in UTF-8 **bytes**, clamped to `[1000, 50000]`. |
884
+ | `skills.allowedHosts` | GitHub / GitLab hosts | Hosts an install **or update** may fetch from. Re-checked on every update, not just at install time. |
885
+ | `skills.disabled` | `[]` | Skill names switched off. |
886
+ | `skills.trustedProjectDirs` | `[]` | Project skill directories you have trusted. |
887
+ | `skills.integrity` | `warn` | What to do when `SKILL.md` no longer matches the copy you approved. `off` skips the check; `warn` flags it in `/skills list` and once per session; `strict` removes it from the catalog and makes `skill()` refuse it. Defaults to `warn` because editing an installed skill is a legitimate thing to do — `strict` suits CI and managed environments. |
888
+ | `skills.usageTracking` | `true` | Keep local per-skill use counters to rank the catalog. Name, count and timestamp only; never transmitted. Inspect with `aragon skills usage`, erase with `--reset --yes`. |
889
+ | `skills.toolPolicy` | `enforce` | How hard a skill's `allowed-tools` bites, for the turn it is loaded in. `off` disables it and says nothing about it to the model; `warn` runs the tool and reports it; `enforce` refuses. Unlike `skills.integrity`, a false positive here means a skill AUTHOR under-declared their own skill — which `aragon skills doctor` reports before it can bite. |
890
+ | `log.level` | `info` | `silent` · `error` · `warn` · `info` · `debug` · `trace`. See [Files & logs](#files--logs) for what each level records. |
891
+ | `log.toFile` | `true` | Write records to a file at all. `false` here is respected; `--log-file` overrides it for one run. |
892
+ | `log.dir` | `""` | Log directory. Empty means `<home>/logs`. Only **absolute** paths are accepted — a relative one would mean a different directory for every working directory you launch from. |
893
+ | `log.maxFileBytes` | `5242880` | Rotate once a file would exceed this, clamped to `[65536, 268435456]`. |
894
+ | `log.maxFiles` | `10` | Files kept in the log directory, clamped to `[1, 200]`. The oldest beyond this are deleted — on rotation **and** on the first write of each day. |
895
+ | `log.redactSecrets` | `true` | Run every record through redaction. Setting it to `false` is the one way to get credentials onto disk, so it prints a warning and has no settings-screen entry. |
896
+ | `log.previewChars` | `512` | How much user content `debug` keeps per field, clamped to `[0, 8192]`. `trace` is never truncated. |
897
+
898
+ Byte, not character: `ToolExecutor` truncates at 100 000 **bytes**, so a
899
+ character-based budget would be roughly triple its nominal size for CJK text
900
+ and would get cut mid-tag.
901
+
902
+ ### Output token limits
903
+
904
+ Every model and every provider defaults to **64000** output tokens. You never
905
+ have to configure this, and if you never touch it the number stays 64000.
906
+
907
+ The number you set is an **ambition, not a promise**: it is clamped down to
908
+ whatever the target model actually accepts. `gpt-4o` caps at 16384 and
909
+ `gemini-1.5-pro` at 8192, and sending 64000 to either is an HTTP 400 that ends
910
+ the turn — so `aragon` sends what the model will take, silently. When the model
911
+ is one it has never seen (a proxy, an endpoint behind `--base-url`, a model that
912
+ shipped last week), it sends 64000, and if the provider objects it reads the real
913
+ ceiling out of the provider's own error, repairs the request, sends it again, and
914
+ remembers the answer for the rest of the session. You see one warning line and
915
+ the run continues.
916
+
917
+ Four ways to change it, highest priority first:
918
+
919
+ ```bash
920
+ aragon --max-tokens 32000 # this run only
921
+ aragon --max-tokens auto # this run only, per-model ceiling
922
+ ARAGON_MAX_TOKENS=32000 aragon # env layer, between the flag and the file
923
+ aragon config set maxTokens 32000 # persisted; prints "Set maxTokens = 32000"
924
+ aragon config set maxTokens auto # persisted as null
925
+ aragon config set maxTokens default # back to 64000
926
+ aragon config get maxTokens # "64000" | "auto"
927
+ ```
928
+
929
+ Inside the TUI, `/max-tokens` reports the current setting **and** the effective
930
+ cap for the live model, and `/max-tokens <n|auto|default>` changes it. The
931
+ settings screen (`/settings`) has the same field with an `Effective:` line under
932
+ it, so a value the model will not honour is visible before you save it.
933
+
934
+ And by hand, in `~/.aragon-agent/config.json` (`aragon config path` prints the
935
+ exact location; `aragon config edit` opens it, and `/reload` picks up an edit
936
+ made in another window):
937
+
938
+ ```jsonc
939
+ {
940
+ "version": 1,
941
+ "provider": "anthropic",
942
+ "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929",
943
+
944
+ // Output token cap.
945
+ // 64000 (or any 256..200000 integer) — an explicit cap, clamped down to
946
+ // the target model's real ceiling when that ceiling is lower.
947
+ // null — auto: use each model's own ceiling, never above 64000.
948
+ // absent — the product default, 64000.
949
+ "maxTokens": 64000
950
+ }
951
+ ```
952
+
953
+ Out-of-range numbers are clamped on the way in **and** on the way out, so a
954
+ hand-edited `900000` becomes `200000` on disk rather than reverting to the
955
+ default on every launch.
956
+
957
+ Extended thinking is reconciled with the cap automatically: `--thinking xhigh`
958
+ asks for a 65536-token budget, Anthropic requires `max_tokens` to be strictly
959
+ greater than it, and the two are resolved together rather than left to collide.
960
+
961
+ These are additive: a config file written by an earlier version loads
962
+ unchanged, with no migration and no version bump.
963
+
964
+ ## Files & logs
965
+
966
+ Everything AragonAgent keeps for you lives under one directory in your home:
967
+
968
+ ```
969
+ ~/.aragon-agent/ (Windows: C:\Users\<you>\.aragon-agent\)
970
+ ├── config.json settings + API keys (0600 on POSIX)
971
+ ├── config.json.bak written by `aragon config edit` before it opens
972
+ ├── prompt-history.jsonl prompts you submitted, for ↑ recall (0600 on POSIX)
973
+ ├── state.json UI bookkeeping: submit count, one-shot notices
974
+ ├── logs/
975
+ │ ├── aragon-2026-07-27.log today, JSON Lines
976
+ │ └── aragon-2026-07-27.1.log rotated at log.maxFileBytes
977
+ ├── sessions/ /save and /resume
978
+ ├── skills/ aragon skills install
979
+ └── skill-usage.json
980
+ ```
981
+
982
+ `config.json` holds **settings only**. What you typed and how often you have
983
+ typed it live in the two files next to it, so that editing your config means
984
+ scrolling past your own settings and nothing else, and so that submitting a
985
+ prompt no longer rewrites the file that holds your API keys.
986
+
987
+ `ARAGON_HOME` moves the whole tree. **It cannot come from a `.env` file** — the
988
+ path is resolved when the process starts, long before a `.env` is read — so set
989
+ it as a real environment variable. `aragon config home` always prints the
990
+ directory actually in use.
991
+
992
+ Upgrading from 0.5.0 or earlier moves your config, sessions and skills here
993
+ automatically, once, and prints a line on stderr when it does. The old
994
+ `%APPDATA%\aragon-agent-nodejs` / `%LOCALAPPDATA%\aragon-agent-nodejs`
995
+ directories are **left in place** so that reinstalling an older build stays
996
+ lossless; `aragon config home` names them, and you can delete them once you are
997
+ satisfied.
998
+
999
+ ### Prompt history
1000
+
1001
+ Every prompt you submit is appended to `~/.aragon-agent/prompt-history.jsonl`,
1002
+ one JSON object per line, so that `↑` recalls it — in this session and in every
1003
+ later one. It is written `0600` on POSIX, it never leaves the machine, and it is
1004
+ **stored verbatim**: a redacted history would recall the wrong text, which is
1005
+ worse than not recalling at all.
1006
+
1007
+ The last 100 distinct prompts are what `↑` walks. The file is rewritten down to
1008
+ that many entries once it passes 400 lines, and a single submission longer than
1009
+ 16 KiB is not recorded at all rather than recorded truncated.
1010
+
1011
+ ```bash
1012
+ aragon history path # where it is, plus a reminder of what is in it
1013
+ aragon history list -n 50 # the 50 most recent, newest first
1014
+ aragon history list --json # raw entries with timestamps
1015
+ aragon history clear --yes # delete the file
1016
+ ```
1017
+
1018
+ Set `historyEnabled` to `false` (`aragon config set historyEnabled false`) to
1019
+ stop recording. Switching it off does **not** delete what is already stored —
1020
+ `aragon history clear --yes` does that — and reading keeps working either way,
1021
+ so you can look before you erase.
1022
+
1023
+ Upgrading from 0.5.x moves an existing `promptHistory` out of `config.json` into
1024
+ this file once, automatically and silently.
1025
+
1026
+ ### What gets logged
1027
+
1028
+ Logs are local files. Nothing is uploaded, ever — there is no network path out
1029
+ of this subsystem at all.
1030
+
1031
+ | Level | Records | Contains your content? |
1032
+ | --- | --- | --- |
1033
+ | `error` | crashes, failed requests, config write/parse failures | no |
1034
+ | `warn` | degraded migrations, clamped values, dropped records | no |
1035
+ | `info` *(default)* | start/exit, config writes, turn boundaries with token counts, tool names and durations | **no** |
1036
+ | `debug` | the above, plus prompts, replies and tool arguments truncated to `log.previewChars` | yes, truncated |
1037
+ | `trace` | full message bodies and full tool output | yes, in full |
1038
+
1039
+ The default is `info` specifically so that attaching a log to a bug report is
1040
+ safe. **`debug` and `trace` write what you typed and what the model replied** —
1041
+ check before sharing one.
1042
+
1043
+ API keys are removed at every level, by two independent passes: any field whose
1044
+ name looks like a credential is blanked whatever it holds, and every string is
1045
+ scanned for known key formats *and* for the literal keys this process is
1046
+ holding. The second half is what covers a custom endpoint whose key looks like
1047
+ nothing in particular. Setting `log.redactSecrets false` disables both, and says
1048
+ so on stdout when you do.
1049
+
1050
+ ### Commands
1051
+
1052
+ ```bash
1053
+ aragon logs path # where records are going right now, and at what level
1054
+ aragon logs list # files, sizes, timestamps
1055
+ aragon logs tail -n 50 # render the last 50 records
1056
+ aragon logs tail --follow # keep printing new ones
1057
+ aragon logs tail --json # raw JSON Lines, for jq
1058
+ aragon logs tail --level warn # only warn and above
1059
+ aragon logs clear --yes # delete every log file
1060
+ aragon logs open # open the directory in your file manager
1061
+
1062
+ aragon history path # where prompt history is kept
1063
+ aragon history list -n 50 # the 50 most recent prompts, newest first
1064
+ aragon history clear --yes # delete the prompt history
1065
+
1066
+ aragon config home # the user-state root (and whether ARAGON_HOME set it)
1067
+ aragon config get log.level # one value; secrets always masked
1068
+ aragon config list --json # everything; secrets always masked here too
1069
+ aragon config edit # open config.json in $VISUAL / $EDITOR
1070
+ ```
1071
+
1072
+ Per-run overrides, none of which are persisted:
1073
+
1074
+ ```bash
1075
+ aragon --log-level debug "…" # or --verbose, which means the same thing
1076
+ aragon --no-log-file "…" # nothing reaches a file this run
1077
+ aragon --log-dir D:\logs "…"
1078
+ ```
1079
+
1080
+ `ARAGON_LOG_LEVEL`, `ARAGON_LOG_FILE=0` and `ARAGON_LOG_DIR` do the same from the
1081
+ environment, and unlike `ARAGON_HOME` these three *can* come from a `.env`.
1082
+
1083
+ ### Insecure TLS opt-in
1084
+
1085
+ When `NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED` is the exact string `0`, the installed or
1086
+ locally built `aragon` process honors that setting and suppresses only Node's
1087
+ standard insecure-TLS warning. Every unrelated process warning remains visible,
1088
+ and any other value leaves warning behavior unchanged. The check happens when a
1089
+ warning is emitted, so a `0` loaded from the project `.env` is covered too; the
1090
+ CLI never creates, normalizes, or persists this variable.
1091
+
1092
+ > **Security warning:** `0` genuinely disables certificate verification. It does
1093
+ > not make an insecure connection safe and can expose credentials or request
1094
+ > contents to interception. Use it only in a controlled environment where you
1095
+ > accept that risk.
1096
+
1097
+ The automatic filter starts with the `aragon` process. An earlier `npm install`
1098
+ or `npx` bootstrap belongs to npm and is outside the installed package's process
1099
+ boundary, so that parent may still print Node's warning. The official repository
1100
+ release flow covers its npm children through `publish-latest.ps1`; callers that
1101
+ own another npm/npx parent must preload the filter in that parent themselves if
1102
+ quiet output is required.
1103
+
1104
+ ### Theming & color
1105
+
1106
+ `--theme` / `config.theme` / `/theme` pick a palette: `warm`, `cool`, `light`, or
1107
+ `auto` (which resolves to `warm` — terminals can't reliably report their
1108
+ background). `dark` remains accepted everywhere as an alias for `cool`.
1109
+ Colors degrade automatically to your terminal's depth (truecolor → 256 → 16 →
1110
+ monochrome) and glyphs fall back to ASCII on terminals without Unicode. Color is
1111
+ disabled — and the UI renders plain monochrome with ASCII glyphs — when any of
1112
+ `NO_COLOR`, `--no-color`, `TERM=dumb`, or `config.color=false` is set; `FORCE_COLOR`
1113
+ is respected. `reducedMotion` (also `ARAGON_REDUCED_MOTION`, and implied by
1114
+ `--no-color`) replaces spinners with a static glyph.
1115
+
1116
+ ### Timeout invariant
1117
+
1118
+ The core idle watchdog (60 s by default) is **shorter** than the tool timeout
1119
+ (120 s), so a long single tool run (a build, `npm install`) would be killed
1120
+ mid-run. The CLI fixes this by always constructing the agent with
1121
+ `idleTimeout ≥ toolTimeout` (defaults 210 s ≥ 180 s), re-derived after config
1122
+ merge. Raise both `--tool-timeout` / `--idle-timeout` for genuinely long jobs.
1123
+
1124
+ ## Development
1125
+
1126
+ ```bash
1127
+ npm run build -w packages/cli # tsc + shebang → dist/cli.js
1128
+ npm test -w packages/cli # vitest
1129
+ node packages/cli/dist/cli.js --version
1130
+ ```
1131
+
1132
+ ### Manual smoke checklist
1133
+
1134
+ - `npm run build -w packages/cli` produces an executable `dist/cli.js` with a
1135
+ shebang; `node packages/cli/dist/cli.js --version` prints the version.
1136
+ - `npm pack -w packages/cli --dry-run --json` lists `dist/cli.js` under `files`.
1137
+ - With `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` set: `aragon` streams a reply, a tool card renders,
1138
+ `Esc` aborts mid-run, `/model` switches models, `/settings` saves a key,
1139
+ `Ctrl+C` twice exits.
1140
+ - `echo "list files" | node dist/cli.js -p` prints an answer and exits `0`.
1141
+ - A missing/invalid key produces a visible, actionable message (never a blank
1142
+ screen), both in the TUI and headless.
1143
+ - `Shift+Tab` at 40, 80 and 120 columns - the chip, the hint and the status bar
1144
+ are all legible and nothing wraps onto a second row.
1145
+ - The question wizard at 24 rows with 5 questions x 4 options - no clipping, and
1146
+ the `n/N` counter matches what is on screen.
1147
+ - Approve a plan and watch the SAME run start writing files, with no second
1148
+ prompt.
1149
+ - `--no-color` on a legacy `cmd.exe` - the chip renders `[PLAN]`, radios render
1150
+ `*`/`o`, checkboxes render `[x]`/`[ ]`, no mojibake anywhere.
1151
+ - A plan with a 600-character summary and a 400-character step detail - the text
1152
+ wraps and scrolls, the footer count matches the real number of rows, and
1153
+ nothing is truncated to a single line.
1154
+ - `--no-hints` on a 20-row terminal in plan mode - the status bar still says
1155
+ `PLAN` with no chip on screen.
1156
+ - Dismiss a plan card with `Esc`, let the agent resubmit, then press `Esc` twice:
1157
+ the run aborts and the session returns to an idle prompt. Do this one BY HAND
1158
+ as well as in a test - the point of the check is whether the exit is findable,
1159
+ which no assertion can tell you.
1160
+
1161
+ ## License
1162
+
1163
+ MIT