Interactive mode (REPL)

Experimental

The REPL is an experimental client. The deterministic /-command half is stable; the Fast-Brain natural-language half is still evolving and may change between releases.

warden repl (aliases warden interactive, warden i; also reachable as warden backend repl) is warden’s interactive mode: a proper terminal REPL to drive your fleet. It is a real line editor — arrow keys, in-line editing, history persisted across sessions, reverse-search, and Tab completion — that closes cleanly with Ctrl-D (or exit), returning you to your shell prompt.

warden repl                  # or: warden i

It drives the fleet two ways — a reliable deterministic half and a natural-language half:

• Deterministic / commands (no model). Type /agents, /spawn <prompt>, /tell <id> <text>, /memory <question>, /pipelines, … and warden runs the exact verb — no LLM in the loop, so it keeps working even when Fast-Brain is slow or unavailable. Typing / pops a live menu that filters as you type — each matching verb with its usage and a one-line summary, right under the prompt (Claude-Code style) — and Tab still completes verb names and live agent ids. /help lists them all.
• Natural language (Fast-Brain). Any other line is planned by Fast-Brain into confirmed warden tool calls — “spin up two agents on the API and the web, then run the tests”. It conducts; it never implements — there’s no edit/write/bash tool in its registry, so all code work is delegated by spawning an agent.

Natural language works out of the box on Fast-Brain — no Ollama, no local_llm config. The / commands and !-shell always work, even if Fast-Brain is unavailable (a bare line then tells you so and points you at /help). Because execution is always plain warden API calls, the REPL never spawns a coding agent on its own.

Deterministic / commands

Every / command maps to one warden verb; reads run immediately, mutations pass through the same confirm gate as the model’s calls. Type /help in-session for the full table. A selection:

Command	Does
/agents (/ls)	list all agents and their status
/agent <id> · /output <id> [lines]	full detail · recent terminal output
/spawn <prompt…>	spawn an agent to do a task
/tell <id> <text…> (/send) · /msg <id> <body…>	type into a session · send a directed message
/stop <id> · /restore <id> · /rm <id> [--hard]	stop (reversible) · restore · clear record
/commit <id> [msg…] · /push <id> [force] · /sync <id> [base] · /check <id> [name]	the git + check lifecycle (/push <id> force → --force-with-lease)
/memory <question…> (/mem, /ask)	answer a project question from .warden/memory.md
/pipelines (/pl) · /pipeline <id> · /cancel <id>	list · inspect · cancel a pipeline
/ctx [prefix] · /ctx-get <key> · /ctx-set <key> <value…>	the shared-context blackboard
/approvals · /approve <id> <option> · /inbox <id> · /collab	approvals · inbox · conflict picture

Unknown /verbs are caught with a hint — a typo never silently falls through to the model.

Guided argument forms

When a / command needs more than you typed, warden collects the arguments interactively instead of just printing a usage line. Each field is presented as the right kind of input:

• a numbered pick-list for fields with a known domain — model (sonnet · opus · haiku · fable), permission_mode (auto · default · acceptEdits · bypassPermissions · dontAsk · plan), type (development · analysis · pr-review · docs · …), and yes/no booleans like worktree;
• a free-text field for open-ended ones (the prompt, a name, a branch).

Two triggers:

• Auto on a missing required argument. A bare /spawn (no prompt) opens the form for the field it needs rather than erroring.
• + to fill everything. A trailing + on the verb — /spawn+ <prompt> — opens the full form (agent name, type, branch, worktree, model, permission mode, …), so you can set the fields the one-line quick path would leave to config.

The form’s structure is always deterministic — the fields and their valid options come from warden’s own enums, so it works with Fast-Brain off. When Fast-Brain is available it adds a hybrid pre-fill: each field opens with a suggested value inferred from your words (/spawn+ review auth for security pre-selects type=pr-review, drafts a name). Press Enter to accept a suggestion, type to override, or - to clear a field back to its config default. The model can only ever nudge a default — it can never offer a value outside the allowed set. After the form, any mutation still passes the normal confirm gate.

Read results are rendered for a human, not dumped as JSON: /agents and /pipelines print aligned tables (id · status · type · name · what), /agent <id> a tight labelled block (empty fields omitted), /ctx a key/value table, and /inbox / /collab / /approvals one compact line each. (Fast-Brain still receives the structured JSON when it plans in natural language — only the deterministic /-command output is reshaped.)

How it behaves

Behaviour	Detail
NL → tool-call loop	Backed by Fast-Brain’s FastBrainChatter (internal/fastbrain; multi-turn tool-calling over a headless backend CLI, latency-bounded and fail-open). A bounded turn budget stops runaway loops. Hardened against small-model slips: hallucinated args (a fabricated repo, a bogus model/type) are scrubbed before the gate, a missing required arg is fed back rather than approved into a doomed call, and a malformed tool call is retried instead of failing the turn.
Read auto-runs, mutate confirms	Read-only verbs (list_agents, get_agent, get_agent_output, get_collaboration_status, read_inbox, list_approvals, ctx_get/ctx_list, pipeline reads) auto-execute.
Mandatory confirm gate	Every mutating verb (spawn_agent, send_to_agent, terminate_agent, delete_agent, restore_agent, approve, commit, push, sync, check, ctx_set, send_message, pipeline_create/_cancel, clean_up) requires explicit operator approval before it runs — non-config-gated, can’t be disabled. A batched plan confirms as one unit. [e]dit walks the call field by field — one short prompt per argument showing the current value (Enter keeps it, Ctrl-C finishes), so you can fill in a field the model omitted (e.g. a branch) without hand-editing JSON. Fields with a known set (model, permission_mode, type, booleans) show a numbered pick-list; a blank field warden fills from config (model, permission_mode) shows that default in the bracket as [default: …], so you can see what an empty answer will use. This is the same engine behind the guided argument forms.
Planning-tier routing	A cheap deterministic pre-classify buckets each request’s needed planning tier; planning runs on Fast-Brain and execution always stays token-free warden calls. The old local_llm.tier / .escalate / .classifier knobs are retired and ignored.
Monitoring verbs	fleet_digest / agent_digest summarize state, pending_for_me surfaces what needs you, and clean_up proposes terminate/delete of finished agents through the same confirm gate.
Project grounding	Ask a project question — /memory <q> (/mem//ask) or the project_memory tool — and warden answers it from .warden/memory.md (memory.ground, default on). Read-only: served by Fast-Brain, it cites each entry’s trust (unverified/trusted/human) + provenance, degrades to the matching entries verbatim with no backend available, and answers “not in project memory” for an absent/empty file (never auto-creating it).
!-shell passthrough	A !-prefixed line runs in a persistent embedded $SHELL (cwd/env persist) and tees output to the terminal. The REPL takes no action on that output — it reports verbatim; the output is visible as context to the next turn.
Real line editor	Backed by readline: arrow-key cursor movement, ↑/↓ history (persisted to ~/.warden/orch_history), Ctrl-R reverse-search, Ctrl-A/E/W/K/U editing, a live /-command menu that filters as you type (verb + summary, painted under the prompt) plus Tab completion of / commands and live agent ids, guided argument forms (pick-lists + free text) when a command needs more input, Ctrl-C to abandon a line, Ctrl-D to close. The prompt and headings are colourised (honours NO_COLOR and non-TTY output).

No local model to choose. warden backend suggest is a retired compatibility stub and warden doctor no longer recommends or checks a local model: the REPL runs on Fast-Brain. Legacy local_llm.* keys still load but are ignored.

For the token-spending alternative — driving the same operations from a full orchestrator agent session (e.g. Claude) — see Orchestration: MCP & skill.