hmbown--codewhale/docs/MODES.md

Modes and Permission Postures

Codewhale has three related concepts:

• TUI mode: what kind of visible interaction you're in (Plan/Work/Operate).
• Permission posture: how aggressively the UI asks before executing tools.
• Workflow overlay: optional long-running orchestration that can run on top of any TUI mode when a task needs many coordinated workers.

Model selection is separate. --model auto and /model auto route each turn to a concrete model and thinking level; they are not TUI modes and are not part of the Tab cycle.

Workflow is also separate from the mode itself. It is the visible ordered orchestration layer for repeatable workflows and Fleet workers. High fan-out routes through durable Fleet-backed workers instead of prompt-only sub-agent fanout. The active mode still controls permissions; Workflow controls whether a large task is planned into a resumable workflow with its own progress view.

TUI Modes

Press Tab to complete composer menus or cycle through the visible modes when the composer is empty: Plan → Work → Operate → Plan. Tab never sends or queues composer text; use Enter to send or queue it. Press Shift+Tab to cycle permission posture (Ask → Auto-Review → Full Access). Press Ctrl+T to cycle reasoning effort. Run /mode to open the mode picker, or switch directly with /mode work, /mode plan, or /mode operate.

• Plan: design-first prompting. The stable primitive names remain familiar, but the runtime centrally refuses file mutation and shell execution. Read-only inspection and policy-allowed research, including deferred Web search/fetch, remain available.
• Work (internally agent): ordinary multi-step execution. The small first-turn toolbox is read, write, edit, bash, agent, and tool_search; approval, sandbox, repository law, and managed policy still decide what may execute.
• Operate: multitask conductor posture. It has the same primitive identities and execution authority as Work. The parent session is the operator: dispatching background workers is the default for independent or parallel work. Handle small or tightly coupled tasks in the parent; use background agent workers for separable streams, and use Workflow when order, phases, gates, shared budgets, or deterministic fan-in matter. Dispatch is not completion — write-capable children must return real verification evidence.

Act and /mode act remain compatibility aliases for Work. Saved settings still normalize to the internal value agent.

Tool availability by mode

Tool family	Plan	Work	Operate
read and policy-allowed deferred research tools	yes	yes	yes
write and edit	visible names; execution denied	approval- and policy-gated	same as Work
bash	visible name; execution denied	approval- and policy-gated	same as Work; delegation is preferred when parallelism or isolation helps
agent	yes, subject to child-depth authority	yes, subject to child-depth authority	yes, subject to child-depth authority
Deferred native, MCP, and plugin tools	discoverable through tool_search when policy permits	same	same
Paid or external-service tools	follows permission posture	follows permission posture	follows permission posture
Access outside the workspace root	explicit trusted paths only	only through trusted paths or trust mode	same trusted-path/trust policy as Work; Fleet profiles never widen it

Operate changes scheduling emphasis, not authority. It neither adds a mode-specific tool denial nor bypasses the active approval, sandbox, shell, ask-rule, repository-law, or managed-policy boundary. Plan remains the mode-specific execution boundary for shell and write-capable tools; that authority difference does not require a different primitive vocabulary.

Operate loop (one screen)

User message
  → small / chat / one-file?  → parent does it (Work-equivalent tools)
  → real / multi-stream work? → goal (if needed) → dispatch background workers
       → each write child: implement → VERDICT PASS/FAIL with evidence
       → ordered / gated fan-in? → Workflow (operate_* starters)
       → high-stakes ambiguous? → best-of-n (N worktrees + reviewer; apply on PASS)
  → parent synthesizes receipts; stays free for the next ask

Lifecycle claims stay exact: dispatched ≠ settled ≠ verified.

allow_shell controls whether bash can execute; it does not rename the tool or make mode the approval authority. Durable tasks and automation keep conservative omitted-field defaults and receive shell authority only when their settings explicitly grant it. Stateful terminal/background controls are specialized deferred tools rather than fields on the small foreground bash schema. Full Access changes the permission posture while hard safety and repository-policy holds remain authoritative.

Action-capable modes can discover the deferred rlm family through tool_search; its open, eval, configure, and close actions own persistent RLM sessions. The legacy split rlm_* spellings remain replay-only aliases. Inside an RLM Python REPL, sub_query_batch fans out 1-16 cheap parallel child calls pinned to deepseek-v4-flash.

The fast deepseek-v4-flash / thinking-off path is called Fin in the product language. Fin is a seam for routing, summaries, cheap child calls, and coordination work; it does not change approval behavior.

/goal sets a session objective with an optional token budget and keeps active objectives visible as Work context. /goal pause stops goal continuation without changing the objective, /goal resume resumes and sends the objective back into the turn, /goal complete marks it done, /goal blocked marks it blocked, and /goal clear removes it. Goal state does not change the active TUI mode, permission posture, or model route. This remains distinct from --model auto, which only controls model and thinking selection.

Workflow builds on the same separation: a goal can ask the agent to keep working, while Workflow supplies the repeatable workflow/progress surface for large fanout. In the UI, a Workflow run should be shown as an overlay on the main screen, not as another mode beside Plan, Work, and Operate.

App-server clients can persist a thread-scoped goal with thread/goal/set, read it with thread/goal/get, and clear it with thread/goal/clear. That persisted record carries active, paused, blocked, usage_limited, budget_limited, or complete status plus token/time accounting fields for clients that need thread resume semantics.

Mode Persistence

Choosing a mode interactively also sets the mode a fresh session starts in. Tab/Shift+Tab cycling, the Alt+A / Alt+P / Alt+Y shortcuts, the hotbar's Plan/Work/Operate actions, and /mode all write default_mode to ~/.codewhale/settings.toml, so switching to Operate survives a restart. The write happens off the event loop; if it fails, the TUI says so in a warning toast rather than reverting silently on the next launch.

Mode, thinking level, and the model picker share one serialized writer, so the selection you made last is the one on disk — a burst of Tab presses cannot end up persisting whichever write happened to finish last — and a mode write never rolls back an unrelated key such as default_model.

Two paths deliberately do not rewrite the startup default: restoring a saved session (which re-installs the mode that session was in) and a mode change refused because a turn is in flight. The legacy yolo entry point installs Work plus Full Access, and agent is what it persists — yolo is a permission alias, never a startup mode.

Re-selecting the mode you are already in is not a no-op. After a restored session the live mode and default_mode routinely disagree, so choosing the live mode again is how you make it durable; Codewhale confirms with a "saved as startup default" receipt rather than reporting "already in that mode".

While a turn is running, every change to the live route is refused — mode, model, thinking level, and provider — no matter which surface you use. That now includes the slash surfaces (/mode, /model, /set <key> <value>, /config <key> <value>, /config preset), which are reachable mid-turn. Press Esc to interrupt first. The restart-only default_mode key is exempt, because it does not touch the running turn.

Codewhale writes settings.toml under a lock that spans processes, and replaces the file atomically, so a second Codewhale instance on the same home directory cannot lose your selection or read a half-written file. At exit, queued writes are flushed before the terminal is restored; anything that failed is printed on the way out instead of disappearing with the alternate screen.

Compatibility Notes

• Older settings files with default_mode = "normal" still load as agent; saving rewrites the normalized value.

Escape Key Behavior

Esc is a cancel stack, not a mode switch.

• Close slash menus or transient UI first.
• Cancel the active request if a turn is running.
• Discard a queued draft if the composer is empty.
• Clear the current input if text is present.
• Otherwise it is a no-op.

Permission Posture

Permission posture controls tool approval and whether a turn may pause for a missing user decision. It is one layer of the full authorization order, not a bypass for tool admission, repository law, or sandbox enforcement. Cycle it with Shift+Tab, or edit it at runtime:

/config
# edit the approval_mode row to: suggest | auto | never

Legacy note: /set approval_mode ... was retired in favor of /config.

• suggest (Ask, default): tool approvals may interrupt, and Codewhale asks when an unresolved user choice materially changes authority, cost, scope, or outcome.
• auto (Auto-Review): the fully autonomous posture. It never opens a user question; the model resolves ambiguity from context, chooses a safe reversible interpretation, or reports that it cannot proceed safely. Tool safety holds remain separate from user questions. Approval decisions here are deterministic: rules and the built-in safety floor allow proven-safe calls, and any call that would otherwise need a human decision is denied rather than executed. No AI reviewer approves actions on your behalf.
• bypass (Full Access): ordinary tool calls do not show approval prompts, while deliberate user questions remain available. Non-bypassable safety, repository-law, and managed-policy holds fail closed as hard blocks instead of contradicting Full Access with an approval modal.
• never: blocks any tool that is not considered safe/read-only; deliberate user questions remain available.

The effective posture and its question discipline are projected into every turn from the same runtime authority that gates tools. A mode/posture change is therefore visible to the next turn. Untrusted runtime-generated input is narrowed before metadata is built and cannot invent approval authority. An explicit Full Access sub-agent handoff preserves the parent's standing posture so ordinary child work does not begin prompting again.

Small-Screen Status Behavior

When terminal height is constrained, the status area compacts first so header/chat/composer/footer remain visible:

• Loading and queued status rows are budgeted by available height.
• Queued previews collapse to compact summaries when full previews do not fit.
• /queue workflows remain available; compact status only affects rendering density.

Workspace Boundary and Trust Mode

By default, file tools are restricted to the --workspace directory. Enable trust mode to allow file access outside the workspace:

/trust on

Bare /trust (like /trust status) only reports the current setting — it does not enable anything. Use /trust off to restrict access again.

Full Access enables trust mode automatically.

MCP Behavior

MCP tools are exposed as mcp_<server>_<tool> and use the same approval flow as built-in tools. Read-only MCP helpers may auto-run in Ask and Auto-Review when policy permits; MCP tools with possible side effects require approval. Full Access does not bypass hard policy holds.

See MCP.md.

Related CLI Flags

Run codewhale --help for the canonical list. Common flags:

• -p, --prompt <TEXT>: one-shot prompt mode (prints and exits)
• codewhale exec --auto --output-format stream-json <PROMPT>: run the tool-backed non-interactive agent and emit one JSON object per line for harnesses and backend wrappers. Exit codes: 0 on success, 1 for genuine task/agent failures, 75 (EX_TEMPFAIL) when the turn ended on a retryable infrastructure failure (provider/transport network/timeout after all in-session retries) so harnesses can tell a retryable infra exit apart from a task failure; the terminal stream metadata event's error_category carries the same classification
• codewhale exec --resume <ID|PREFIX> <PROMPT> / --session-id <ID|PREFIX>: continue a saved session non-interactively
• codewhale exec --continue <PROMPT>: continue the most recent saved session for this workspace non-interactively
• codewhale fork <ID|PREFIX> / codewhale fork --last: copy a saved session into a new sibling session; forked sessions retain additive parent-session metadata and show that lineage in session listings
• --model <MODEL>: when using the codewhale facade, forward a DeepSeek model override to the TUI
• --workspace <DIR>: workspace root for file tools
• -r, --resume <ID|PREFIX|latest>: resume a saved session
• -c, --continue: resume the most recent session in this workspace
• --max-subagents <N>: clamp to 1..=128
• --mouse-capture / --no-mouse-capture: opt in or out of internal mouse scrolling, transcript selection, right-click context actions, and transcript scrollbar dragging. Mouse capture is enabled by default on non-Windows terminals and on Windows Terminal/ConEmu/Cmder so drag selection copies only transcript text, removes visual wrap-column line breaks from paragraphs, and stays scoped to the transcript pane; hold Shift while dragging or use --no-mouse-capture for raw terminal selection. It defaults off on legacy Windows console (CMD without WT_SESSION / ConEmuPID) and inside JetBrains JediTerm — PyCharm/IDEA/CLion/etc. — where the terminal advertises mouse support but forwards SGR mouse events as raw text (#878, #898). Use --mouse-capture to opt in anywhere it's defaulted off. Raw terminal selection may cross the right sidebar and include visual wraps because the terminal, not the TUI, owns the selection.
• --profile <NAME>: select config profile
• --config <PATH>: config file path
• -v, --verbose: verbose logging

Branching and Rollback

Codewhale has three related but intentionally separate recovery paths:

• codewhale fork <ID> creates a new saved session from an existing saved conversation and records the source session id. This is the safe way to explore a different answer path without overwriting the original session.
• Esc-Esc backtrack rewinds the live transcript to a previous user prompt and restores that prompt into the composer for editing.
• /restore and the revert_turn tool restore workspace files from side-git snapshots. /restore list [N] lists more snapshot options before choosing a rollback point. They do not rewrite conversation history.

A Pi-style in-file tree browser is a larger UI/data-model project. v0.8.40 ships the bounded fork/backtrack primitives and explicit lineage metadata.