Usage

Starting a session

notagent

notagent opens as a TUI in the current directory. The startup card shows the directory, the git branch and the active model. Send /help at any time for the list of commands.

Commands

Command	What it does
/login	Pick a provider and store an API key or run an OAuth flow
/logout	Remove a stored credential and deactivate that provider
/model	Pick a model with fuzzy search; /model <provider>/<model> also works
/leases on|off	Atomic file leases (default: off)
/bash-filter on|off	Shell-output compaction (default: off)
/index on|off	The local codebase index
/goal <objective>	Goal mode: keep pursuing an objective across turns, with optional turn and token budgets
/btw <question>	Ask a side question without adding it to the conversation
/fork, /clone, /tree	Branch and navigate the session tree
/export, /import	Write the session as HTML or JSONL; resume from JSONL
/mcp	List, add, inspect and authenticate MCP servers
/compact	Compact the context by hand
/thinking	Set the reasoning effort for models that support it
/settings	Everything else

Leases

With /leases on, every mutating file tool takes an advisory, time-bounded lease before it writes. The leases live in .notagent/leases in the workspace. Only one holder may modify a file at a time, a content hash taken at reservation detects a file that changed underneath the holder before the commit, and leases expire on their own so a crashed agent never blocks a file. Several agents working in one checkout stop overwriting each other.

Bash filter

/bash-filter on compacts shell output before it enters the context. The compaction is conservative and process-free: whenever a result would be empty, larger than the raw output or uncertain, the raw output passes through untouched. Verbose build, test and package-manager output shrinks to what the agent actually needs.

Minified tools

read_minified returns a compact view of a source file: comments removed, blank lines dropped, indentation collapsed to one space per nesting level. patch_minified and multi_patch_minified edit through that same view. A source map translates each edit back to the real file, and nothing is written until every edit succeeds. Surveying and navigating code costs a fraction of a full read.

Local code index

/index on builds a tree-sitter symbol index of the workspace. The agent queries it through a dedicated tool instead of grepping blindly.

Goal mode

/goal <objective> sets an objective the agent keeps pursuing across turns. Optional turn and token budgets stop the loop when they are reached. The footer shows the goal’s status, the turns used and the tokens spent on its own line, so a running loop stays readable at a glance.

Session tree and remote sessions

/fork, /clone and /tree branch and navigate a session. /export writes HTML or JSONL, /import resumes from JSONL. Remote sessions use a CBOR binary protocol, a Unix-socket session server and SQLite session storage, so a session can outlive the terminal that started it.