Conversations commands

conversations start

Start a second conversation from inside a running session, in a new terminal tab, in the same folder. The brief you pass becomes its first prompt. The session you run it from goes on with its own task. The conversations API then names the session it came from as the new row's parent.

The side-conversation skill tells the agent when to run it and how to write the brief.

agnostic-ai conversations start <<'BRIEF'
Write the release notes for the parser change.

## Context
Branch main. The change is in internal/parser/.

## Report back
The draft, and any change you were unsure about.
BRIEF

Run from Claude Code in a Ghostty tab, it prints one line:

Started Claude Code in a new Ghostty tab in /Users/me/shop, linked to claude:2f0c1e9a-5b7d-4c3e-9a1f-6d8e2b4c7a90.

The brief must not be empty and must fit in 4096 bytes. Start it with the goal as one plain sentence: it becomes the new conversation's title.

Where it runs

The first time, macOS may ask whether the terminal that runs the command may control Terminal or Ghostty.

When it refuses

It exits with code 1 and starts nothing when:

• It cannot tell which session it runs in: no Claude Code or Codex session is among its parent processes, the nearest tool among them cannot be resolved, or the Codex process holds several threads and does not say which.
• The tool is not installed: its command is not on PATH.
• The brief is empty, longer than 4096 bytes, holds a null byte or text that is not UTF-8, or standard input is a terminal and no --brief-file was given.
• The folder or the path of agnostic-ai holds a control character (C0, DEL or C1) or text that is not UTF-8, which a terminal would act on as it is typed.
• No tab can be opened. The message then gives the line that starts it by hand.

Limits

• A Claude Code process is recognised by its session file, or by the name claude. An install that runs as node and has no session file is not recognised. Started inside a Codex session, the command then names the Codex thread as the parent, not that Claude Code session.
• Codex as a parent needs CODEX_THREAD_ID, or a Codex process that holds one thread.

The link line

The new conversation's first prompt starts with one line that names the session it came from, then a blank line, then your brief:

Continues claude:2f0c1e9a-5b7d-4c3e-9a1f-6d8e2b4c7a90

Write the release notes for the parser change.

• The line is Continues <tool>:<id>, where <tool> is claude, codex or cursor, and <id> has that tool's id form. It must be the whole first line of what was typed, with one space after Continues and nothing after the id. Text a tool adds around the prompt, such as a reminder block before it, does not count. Anything else is plain text: spaces before the line, two spaces, a tab, or words after the id.
• The Conversations list reads it as the parent of the row, and cuts it from the title, the opening and the latest prompt.
• You can type the line yourself at the start of a new conversation. It only decides where the row is shown.
• The tool's own history still shows the line.
• Hiding, archiving, renaming or deleting the parent never changes the new conversation.

What runs where

The brief never becomes part of a shell or AppleScript string. The command saves it to a one-time file in agnostic-ai's own settings folder (conversation-briefs/, readable by you only, under a random name). The new tab runs a fixed line, cd '<folder>' && '<agnostic-ai>' conversations run <id>. That reads the brief, finds the tool, removes the file, and starts the tool with the brief as its one argument. Running the line a second time starts nothing. When the tool is missing from that tab's PATH, the brief is kept, so the line works once the tool is there. A brief no tab ran is removed after a day.