An agent chat used to open with the model knowing the name of a machine and
nothing about what was on it, so the first two rounds of every reply went on
finding out. It now gets a listing: one read-only command, `git ls-files` where
that works and `find` otherwise, falling back to an SFTP walk that always does.
git first because a repository already carries somebody's considered list of
what is not part of the project, and reproducing it by hand is how an index
ends up mostly build output.
The listing is budgeted rather than dumped. A tree of a thousand files is worse
than no tree -- it costs the window on every request forever and buries the four
names that mattered -- so directories that will not fit are shown as a count and
the model is told to open one itself. Collapsing picks the deepest and largest
first: by saving alone it would take `src/` before `src/web/static/vendor/`,
because it contains it, and lose every name worth having.
Read from a cache and never fetched. `harness.context_variables` is synchronous
and sits on the request path; the walk happens in the generation setup, which is
async and already doing network work, with a short wait. A chat whose first
reply outruns its first walk simply has no listing that turn and the fragment
disappears rather than appearing as an empty heading.
Then `@`, over the same index and over the library, and `/` for commands with an
Alt-based keyboard for the same jobs. A mentioned file arrives as contents, not
a reference -- a small model asked to call file_read often does not bother -- and
it arrives with its absolute path and the machine it came from, because a model
handed `main.py` cannot tell which of four it is and cannot name it back when
asked to change something.
The rule that matters for `/`: a message that merely starts with a slash still
sends. `//` escapes and an unrecognised command is posted as written. Swallowing
somebody's message is a much worse failure than an unknown command.
Two exceptions to Manual mode now, not one. Browsing and indexing are a person
acting, not a model, so neither passes through policy.py -- the same argument
the terminal panel rests on.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The mode select in the topbar posted with hx-post against a route that only
answers PATCH, so every change returned 405 and the mode never moved. htmx
shows nothing when a request fails, so the control looked like it worked: the
select stayed where you put it and the server ignored you. It has never worked.
Two more of the same kind. A mode could not be chosen at all until the chat
existed, so reaching Plan meant sending something in Manual first and letting
the model answer under the wrong rules. And the project directory box was real
and submitted, but unlabelled and squeezed to a few characters by the select
beside it, so it read as broken -- which is how it was reported.
So the kind, the connection, the directory and the mode move out of the strip
above the text and into one toolbar row beneath it, where attach and send
already are. The directory becomes a button that opens a browser over SFTP,
because a path is something you would rather find than spell. `scan_dir` is new
beside `list_dir`: a picker has to tell a directory from a file before it can
draw the row, and `list_dir` backs a tool whose contract is a list of names and
must not change under a model mid-conversation.
Browsing is a person clicking, not a model calling, so it does not pass through
policy.py -- the same argument the terminal panel rests on. It does mean Manual
mode has a second exception now.
Also: .chip was two components with one name, and the attachment card won, so
the Chat/Agent pills silently wore its padding. --radius-md was used twice and
declared nowhere, so both fell back to 0. .btn.is-active has been set by
syncToggles since the terminal landed and styled by nothing. Enter-to-send
ignored isComposing, so committing an IME candidate sent the message. The
terminal had five colours of a sixteen-colour palette, with fallbacks from a
palette that no longer exists.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A real shell on the chat's own connection, opened and closed like the
inspector and never beside it. The modes govern the model; what a person
types is theirs, since they hold the credential and could open the same
shell with an ssh client. The model cannot see the panel -- a button
copies the output you choose into the composer.
The session outlives the socket: closing the panel leaves a build
running, and coming back reattaches with the scrollback. Two tabs share
one shell and the smaller window decides the size. It ends on an idle
timeout, on deleting the chat, on disabling, moving or deleting the
connection, and on a restart -- which says why rather than quietly
opening a fresh shell that has lost the working directory.
The nginx template's `Connection ""` is right for SSE and fails every
WebSocket handshake, so `location /` now uses a `map $http_upgrade`;
update.sh grows a drift check for it, because the only symptom on a
stale vhost is a panel that cannot connect.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
An agent chat will act on a machine you choose, so this is the screen where
you choose it. User-owned like a note, not admin-owned like a connection:
these are somebody's own machines and somebody's own keys, and "anyone in
this group may log in to my server" is a different feature with a different
blast radius. services/sharing.py is deliberately not involved either --
sharing grants reading, and a host somebody else can read is a host they
can log in to.
Trust on first use, made explicit rather than assumed. Adding a host does
not connect to it. Check looks at its key and shows you the fingerprint;
nothing is sent until you accept, because get_server_host_key completes the
key exchange and stops -- no username, no credential. Accepting pins it,
and a host that later presents a different key is refused with the reason
rather than quietly trusted. Moving a profile to another host or port
forgets the pin, since a key belongs to the machine it came from.
Four asyncssh defaults are actively wrong here and all four are passed
explicitly: every LLeMbas user shares one unix account, so `known_hosts`
would be a shared trust store, `client_keys` would authenticate one person
with another's key, `config` would let a ProxyCommand redirect the
connection, and `agent_path` would silently use $SSH_AUTH_SOCK. There is a
test for exactly that, and it needs no server.
Files go over SFTP rather than through a shell. The SSH exec protocol
carries one command *string* that the far side parses, with no argv form at
all, so a model-supplied path in a command line is unavoidably a quoting
problem. Over SFTP a path is a path.
Chat gains its kind, connection, project directory and mode; the first
three are fixed once a chat has a message, because a transcript whose
earlier turns ran somewhere else is not one conversation.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Jaroslav Beneš