Codeman Agent Skill

Driving Codeman from inside a session

You are an agent running inside a Codeman-managed terminal session. Codeman is the

server that spawned you; its HTTP API can start, prompt, watch, and delete other

sessions.

Read as far as your job needs and no further. §0 is the bootstrap, run once. §1 is

the whole fast path: spawn N workers, task them, collect answers. **If §1 covers your

job, run it and stop there.** The sections after it are for jobs it does not cover, and

reading them to be thorough is the main reason a ten-second run takes minutes. §2 is the

verb table when your job is a different one. §3 and §4 are the rules; §6 is setup and

credentials, which you only need when something 401s.

Everything else loads on demand, and is meant to be opened at one section, not read

through: the verbs in detail (the old §5) in reference/verbs.md,

worked multi-worker flows in reference/recipes.md, endpoint

tables and a symptom gallery in reference/endpoints.md, and

direct messaging to claude workers in reference/messaging.md.

0. Guard and bootstrap

If CODEMAN_MUX is not 1, stop and say so. Do not guess an API URL; a server

you are not part of is not yours to drive.

⚠️ Your shell state does not survive between tool calls. Each Bash call starts a

fresh shell, so $API, $SELF, the CURL array and delete_session are all gone by

the next call, and $$ is a different pid. The filesystem does survive, so write

the preamble to a file once and source it afterwards, rather than re-pasting a

hundred-odd lines at the top of every call (a half-re-pasted preamble used to be the

single most likely way to break a run).

Codeman seeds the preamble file for you when it spawns a claude session (server

1.18.3+), so the bootstrap is usually nothing at all: these are the two lines every

later call opens with, and your first REAL call performs them anyway:

. "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/codeman-agent-$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID.sh" 2>/dev/null
[ "${CODEMAN_PREAMBLE:-}" = 1.22.0 ] || { echo "preamble missing or stale; run the full §0 block"; exit 1; }

⚠️ Never spend a Bash call on this check alone. §1's block opens with this same

loader, so when §1 is the job, start there: the check rides the spawn call for free,

and a standalone "preamble OK" call buys nothing while costing a full model turn

(measured live: a lone check plus the deliberation around it added ~6 s to a 28 s

two-worker run). §0 is done the moment any job call passes its opening check. Only

when a call reports missing or stale, run the full block below once — and run it

verbatim: paste it as-is, never re-type it, trim it, or "extract the parts you

need". A hand-assembled

preamble is the documented failure mode of this skill: one live run rebuilt it

"minimally" and lost the X-Codeman-Parent-Session header (every worker spawned with

no lineage arc in the web UI) and the fast-path functions (the spawn fell back to a

serial quick-start loop plus pid polls), turning a ten-second job into a fifty-second

one. If your harness directs temporary files into a scratchpad directory, that

directive covers task scratch, not this file: it is a per-session cache that every

later call re-sources by this exact path, so keep the path below. If you must relocate

it anyway, copy the block's content byte-for-byte unchanged and source your path in

every later call instead.

test "${CODEMAN_MUX:-}" = 1 || { echo "Not inside a Codeman-managed session; refusing to act."; exit 1; }
: "${CODEMAN_SESSION_ID:?CODEMAN_SESSION_ID not set}" "${HOME:?HOME not set}"
PRE="${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/codeman-agent-$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID.sh"
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$PRE")"
# Rewrite unless the file already ends with THIS version's stamp, so a stale or a
# half-written file self-heals here instead of costing you a round trip to rm it.
grep -qs '^CODEMAN_PREAMBLE=1.22.0$' "$PRE" || (umask 077; cat > "$PRE" <<'PREAMBLE'
# ---- Codeman agent preamble 1.22.0 (seeded by Codeman at session spawn; the SKILL.md §0 bootstrap rewrites it when missing or stale) ----
API="${CODEMAN_API_URL:?CODEMAN_API_URL not set; refusing to guess}"
SELF="${CODEMAN_SESSION_ID:?CODEMAN_SESSION_ID not set}"
# Credentials, cheapest first. Your session has usually INHERITED the server's
# CODEMAN_PASSWORD already (§6 explains why, and what to do when it has not);
# the data dir's .env is the documented fallback, the same one `codeman attach`
# reads. The data dir is wherever the hook-secret file lives. Values may be
# quoted or `export`-prefixed.
ENV_FILE="${CODEMAN_HOOK_SECRET_FILE:+${CODEMAN_HOOK_SECRET_FILE%hook-secret}.env}"
envval() { sed -n "s/^\(export \)\{0,1\}$1=//p" "$ENV_FILE" | tail -1 | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/; s/^'\''\(.*\)'\''$/\1/'; }
if [ -z "${CODEMAN_PASSWORD:-}" ] && [ -n "$ENV_FILE" ] && [ -f "$ENV_FILE" ]; then
  CODEMAN_USERNAME=$(envval CODEMAN_USERNAME)
  CODEMAN_PASSWORD=$(envval CODEMAN_PASSWORD)
fi
AUTH=(); [ -n "${CODEMAN_PASSWORD:-}" ] && AUTH=(-u "${CODEMAN_USERNAME:-admin}:$CODEMAN_PASSWORD")
# -k: harmless on http, required on https (self-signed cert).
# X-Codeman-Parent-Session: tags workers YOU spawn as your children, so the web UI can
# draw the lineage. Set once here and every present and future create call carries it;
# it is ignored on every other endpoint. Purely cosmetic (see §5.1) and it can never
# fail a spawn, so there is no case where you would want to leave it off.
# X-Codeman-Agent-Origin: marks a case directory a spawn CREATES as agent scratch, so the
# user can find and delete it long after your workers are gone (§5.14). Same deal: set
# once, cosmetic, never fails a spawn, and it labels only directories Codeman creates.
CURL=(curl -sk "${AUTH[@]}" -H "X-Codeman-Parent-Session: $SELF" -H "X-Codeman-Agent-Origin: codeman-skill")
CID=codeman-agent-1            # FIXED literal, never "agent-$$": see below

# Fail-CLOSED session delete. The DELETE lives INSIDE the guard on purpose: the older
# `is_self "$SID" || curl -X DELETE ...` shape failed OPEN, because an undefined
# is_self exits 127 and the `||` branch then ran the delete completely unguarded.
# Undefined delete_session is "command not found", which deletes nothing.
delete_session() {
  local id="${1:-}"
  [ -n "$id" ] || { echo "refusing: empty session id"; return 1; }
  [ "${#SELF}" -ge 8 ] || { echo "refusing: \$SELF unset or too short to prove this is not me"; return 1; }
  # ids appear in full AND 8-char form (Docker exports a truncated $SELF; mux names and
  # UI surfaces carry 8-char ids), so compare by prefix in BOTH directions. Equality or
  # a one-directional check each miss a real combination, and the miss deletes you.
  case "$id" in "$SELF"*) echo "refusing: $id is me"; return 1 ;; esac
  case "$SELF" in "$id"*) echo "refusing: $id is me"; return 1 ;; esac
  "${CURL[@]}" -X DELETE "$API/api/v1/sessions/$id"
}

# ---- fast path: the four verbs, already written. §1 composes them. ----
_composer_up() {   # <sid> <timeoutMs> -> "true"/"false". `shift+tab` is the one token
  "${CURL[@]}" -G "$API/api/v1/sessions/$1/wait-output" \
    --data-urlencode 'match=shift+tab' --data-urlencode 'from=buffer' \
    --data-urlencode "timeout=$2" | jq -r '.data.wait.matched // false'
}
_dsh_up() {        # <sid> <timeoutMs> -> "true"/"false". The DeepSeek Harness TUI's
  # composer glyph. Override with DSH_READY_MARK for a profile that draws another one.
  "${CURL[@]}" -G "$API/api/v1/sessions/$1/wait-output" \
    --data-urlencode "match=${DSH_READY_MARK:-❯}" --data-urlencode 'from=buffer' \
    --data-urlencode "timeout=$2" | jq -r '.data.wait.matched // false'
}
# ---- the workspace-trust dialog: READ the screen, never press Enter blind ----
# Claude Code 2.1.252 dropped the option numbers, REVERSED them, and highlights
# "No, exit" by default:
#     Security guide
#   ❯ No, exit
#     Yes, I trust this folder
#   Enter to confirm . Esc to cancel
# so the bare \r that answered the old layout now answers *exit* and the pane is
# dead (`status 1`) seconds after the spawn -- measured on a live 2.1.252 case.
# These two read the rendered pane and steer onto the trust option instead.
_trust_key() {     # <sid> -> "confirm" | "move" | "" (nothing safe to press)
  # full=1 returns the RENDERED pane; a claude pane keeps no tmux history, so that
  # is the current frame rather than every repaint since launch. tail -1 anyway,
  # because the freshest marked row is the only one still true.
  "${CURL[@]}" -G "$API/api/v1/sessions/$1/terminal" --data-urlencode 'full=1' \
    | jq -r '.data.terminalBuffer // empty' \
    | sed -e "s/$(printf '\033')\[[0-9;?]*[a-zA-Z]//g" -e "s/$(printf '\033')[()][AB0]//g" \
    | tr -d ' \t' | grep -i '❯[0-9.]*\(yes,itrustthisfolder\|no,exit\)' | tail -1 \
    | sed -e 's/.*[Yy]es,.*/confirm/' -e 's/.*[Nn]o,.*/move/'
}
_accept_trust() {  # <sid> -> 0 once it has answered the dialog, 1 if it could not
  local sid="$1" k i=1
  while [ "$i" -le 6 ]; do
    k=$(_trust_key "$sid")
    [ -n "$k" ] || return 1   # no dialog on screen, or a layout this cannot read
    # A SEPARATE clientId for these keys. seq is monotonic per clientId, so
    # spending prompt numbers here would make the next sendwait -- whose default
    # seq is the epoch second -- look like a stale duplicate and vanish silently.
    "${CURL[@]}" -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$sid/input" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
      -d "$(jq -nc --arg k "$([ "$k" = confirm ] && printf '\r' || printf '\033[B')" \
              --arg c "$CID-trust-$sid" --argjson s "$i" \
              '{input:$k,useMux:true,clientId:$c,seq:$s}')" >/dev/null
    [ "$k" = confirm ] && return 0
    sleep 1; i=$((i+1))   # re-read: the arrow is CONFIRMED before Enter goes out
  done
  return 1
}
# spawn_worker <caseName> [mode] -> session id on stdout, diagnostics on stderr.
# quick-start AND readiness in one call, with a strict contract: NON-EMPTY stdout means
# a READY worker whose end-of-turn signal can be trusted -- a claude worker in a
# hook-carrying case, or a `deepseek` worker whose harness TUI drew its composer.
# Anything less is rc 1 with EMPTY stdout, and the half-spawned session is deleted here
# rather than handed back, because a worker that never drew its composer would eat the
# task prompt with its trust dialog. There is deliberately no pid poll: wait-output
# already blocks until the composer draws, and pid!=null proved startup, never readiness.
spawn_worker() {
  local name="${1:?spawn_worker needs a case name}" mode="${2:-claude}" q sid cp r
  # parentSessionId doubles the CURL header, so a spawn_worker copied off the shared
  # curl (or a body someone rebuilt from this recipe) still carries its lineage.
  # deepseek: ask for the same permission posture the Run button sends, because the
  # harness's own default (`workspace-write`) still ASKS, and a worker that stops on
  # an approval row is a worker no fan-out can finish. It is not an escalation --
  # claude workers already spawn with permissions skipped, and in multi-user mode the
  # server clamps this back to `workspace-write` for an owner without the grant.
  # Spawn by hand (§5.1) when you want a worker that asks.
  q=$("${CURL[@]}" -X POST "$API/api/v1/quick-start" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
      -d "$(jq -nc --arg n "$name" --arg m "$mode" --arg p "$SELF" \
        '{caseName:$n,mode:$m,parentSessionId:$p}
         + (if $m == "deepseek" then {deepSeekConfig:{permissionMode:"danger-full-access"}} else {} end)')")
  sid=$(jq -r 'if .success then .data.sessionId else empty end' <<<"$q")
  # NOT retryable in a loop: every quick-start failure code is terminal (§5.1).
  [ -n "$sid" ] || { jq -c '{error,errorCode}' <<<"$q" >&2; return 1; }
  if [ "$mode" = deepseek ]; then
    # The one non-claude mode with REAL end-of-turn signals: its TUI reports
    # idle/working/blocked to Codeman, so sendwait, until=stop and the Approvals
    # Inbox all work here exactly as they do for claude. No hook file to vet
    # (the bridge is env-injected, not a workspace file) and no trust dialog.
    # ⚠️ Readiness is still not optional, and NOT interchangeable with the stop
    # signal: the harness's boot report lands ~300ms BEFORE the composer paints
    # (measured 2.26s vs 2.56s after spawn), so a sendwait fired straight after
    # quick-start returns on that BOOT signal, reports a turn that never ran, and
    # strands the prompt in a pane that was not yet taking input.
    r=$(_dsh_up "$sid" 45000)
    [ "$r" = true ] || { echo "dsh worker $sid never drew a composer: no pane-capable profile, a profile whose composer is not '${DSH_READY_MARK:-❯}' (set DSH_READY_MARK), or a harness that failed to boot -- check GET /api/v1/deepseek/status. Deleted it" >&2
      delete_session "$sid" >/dev/null; return 1; }
    printf '%s\n' "$sid"; return 0
  fi
  [ "$mode" = claude ] || { printf '%s\n' "$sid"; return 0; }   # no other mode draws a composer to wait on
  # The server installs hooks into every claude workspace now, so this grep normally
  # passes; it stays because the install is gated on a setting the operator can turn
  # off, remote sessions never get hooks, and a session created by an older server
  # still has none. No marker means sendwait would false-resolve on flapping idle,
  # possibly inside the user's REAL repo: refuse rather than run the job there.
  cp=$(jq -r '.data.casePath // empty' <<<"$q")
  grep -qs '/api/hook-event' "$cp/.claude/settings.local.json" || {
    echo "case '$name' resolved to '$cp', which has no Codeman hooks (workspaceHooksEnabled off, remote, or an older server?): turn the setting on, or work §5.1+§5.5 by hand with markers" >&2
    delete_session "$sid" >/dev/null; return 1; }
  # Short composer wait FIRST, then the trust dialog: a case still showing the
  # dialog can never pass the composer wait, so acting early keeps a cold case from
  # paying the whole long wait before the fallback even runs (§5.2). A warm case
  # matches in under a second and never reaches it, and _accept_trust returns in a
  # blink when there is no dialog, so this costs nothing in the ordinary slow case.
  r=$(_composer_up "$sid" 5000)
  if [ "$r" != true ]; then
    # Codeman answers this dialog itself and normally wins the race; this is the
    # bounded fallback for when its 90 s window / 6-keystroke cap has run out.
    _accept_trust "$sid"
    r=$(_composer_up "$sid" 45000)
  fi
  [ "$r" = true ] || { echo "worker $sid never drew a composer; deleted it. Retry by hand via the §5.2 ladder (its billed stage-4 probe included)" >&2
    delete_session "$sid" >/dev/null; return 1; }
  printf '%s\n' "$sid"
}
# spawn_workers <caseName[:mode]>... -> one "<caseName> <sessionId>" line per worker, in
# order; the sessionId column is EMPTY for a spawn that failed (stderr has why).
# CONCURRENT: N workers cost about what one costs. Spawning them one Bash call at a time
# is the single biggest avoidable delay in this skill. A bare name is a claude worker;
# `beta:deepseek` makes that one a DeepSeek Harness worker, and a mixed fleet is one
# call. Case names must be UNIQUE: two workers in one case directory co-edit the same
# tree (§4), so a repeat is an error here, not a race (the mode never disambiguates two
# workers, since they would still share the directory).
spawn_workers() {
  local d spec n m i=0
  [ "$#" -gt 0 ] || { echo "spawn_workers: no case names given" >&2; return 1; }
  [ -z "$(printf '%s\n' "$@" | sed 's/:.*//' | sort | uniq -d)" ] || { echo "spawn_workers: duplicate case names" >&2; return 1; }
  d=$(mktemp -d "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/codeman-spawn.XXXXXX") || return 1
  for spec in "$@"; do
    n=${spec%%:*}; m=${spec#*:}; [ "$m" = "$spec" ] && m=claude
    ( spawn_worker "$n" "$m" > "$d/$i" ) & i=$((i+1))
  done
  wait
  i=0; for spec in "$@"; do printf '%s %s\n' "${spec%%:*}" "$(cat "$d/$i" 2>/dev/null)"; i=$((i+1)); done
  rm -rf "$d"
}
# sendwait <sid> <prompt> [seq] -> blocks until that worker's turn ENDS (~10 min ceiling
# across its two waits). One billed turn. The \r and the per-worker clientId are applied
# here, which is why you never hand-build this body. seq defaults to the CURRENT EPOCH
# SECOND so that every new prompt is a new frame: the server drops any (clientId,seq)
# pair it has already applied, so a fixed default would make every later prompt to that
# worker a silent no-op that still "succeeds" and reports the previous turn's state.
# Pass seq explicitly for exactly one reason: resending a possibly-delivered frame as a
# deliberate duplicate, at the SAME number (§5.3).
# Delivery is SELF-HEALING: an Ink repaint occasionally eats the Enter, leaving the
# typed prompt stranded on the composer while a long wait runs its whole timeout
# (observed live). So the first wait is short; on its timeout a bare \r goes out (the
# missing Enter when the prompt is stranded, a no-op when the turn is genuinely
# running), then the ORIGINAL frame is resent unchanged, which the server takes as a
# tagged duplicate: it re-waits without retyping (§5.3). Trustworthy for a worker
# spawn_worker handed back -- claude (hooks vetted) or deepseek (status bridge) --
# and for those only. Hook-less workspaces and the other modes resolve on flapping
# idle: markers instead (§5.5). ⚠️ A dsh worker running a profile that does not
# implement the status contract is the one case that LOOKS like claude but is not:
# it accepts the send and then burns both waits. One timeout on a dsh worker whose
# pane clearly finished means that profile, so switch that worker to markers.
sendwait() {
  local sid="${1:?}" p="${2:?}" seq="${3:-$(date +%s)}" body r
  # `wait:"stop,exit"`, never the `wait:true` default set: that set also carries
  # `idle`, which is INFERRED from output stabilization and flaps mid-turn. On a
  # dsh worker whose TUI repaints rarely the session reads `idle` while the model
  # is still answering, and the re-wait below then resolved in 0 ms with
  # `signal:"idle"` on a turn that had another three minutes to run (measured).
  # A wait named after the end of a turn should only end with the turn, or with
  # the worker. ⚠️ This is also what makes a wrong mode LOUD: the modes that
  # cannot deliver `stop` answer 400 (before writing anything) instead of
  # resolving on a flap, which is the answer that sends you to markers (§5.5).
  body=$(jq -nc --arg p "$p" --arg c "$CID-$sid" --argjson s "$seq" \
    '{input:($p+"\r"),useMux:true,clientId:$c,seq:$s,wait:"stop,exit",waitTimeout:20000}')
  r=$("${CURL[@]}" -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$sid/input" \
        -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-binary "$body")
  if jq -e '.data.delivered and .data.wait.timedOut' <<<"$r" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    "${CURL[@]}" -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$sid/input" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
      -d "$(jq -nc --arg c "$CID-$sid" --argjson s "$(date +%s)" \
        '{input:"\r",useMux:true,clientId:$c,seq:$s}')" >/dev/null
    # The resend is a tagged DUPLICATE, so the server skips the write and reports
    # `delivered:false` for it -- truthfully, but about the wrong send. The first
    # one delivered, so carry that forward, or §1's cleanup reads a completed turn
    # as an undelivered one and keeps a finished worker forever.
    r=$("${CURL[@]}" -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$sid/input" \
          -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-binary "$(jq -c '.waitTimeout=580000' <<<"$body")" \
        | jq -c 'if .success and (.data.wait.ended | not) then .data.delivered = true else . end')
  fi
  printf '%s\n' "$r"
}
# last_text <sid> [prev] -> that worker's last assistant message (claude, codex and
# deepseek write a real transcript; the other modes have none, so read the terminal
# instead -- §5.4). Polled, because the transcript write LAGS the stop signal, and
# "some text exists" is not "THIS turn's text exists": right after a SECOND turn on the same worker the endpoint still serves
# the previous answer for a beat (observed live). When reading consecutive turns, pass
# the previous answer as [prev]: the poll then holds out for text that differs from it,
# falling back to whatever it last saw if the budget runs dry, so an honestly repeated
# answer still comes back. Non-zero exit means the worker really never wrote one.
last_text() {
  local t="" prev="${2:-}"
  for _ in $(seq 1 15); do
    t=$("${CURL[@]}" "$API/api/v1/sessions/$1/last-response" | jq -r '.data.text // empty')
    [ -n "$t" ] && [ "$t" != "$prev" ] && { printf '%s\n' "$t"; return 0; }
    sleep 1
  done
  [ -n "$t" ] && { printf '%s\n' "$t"; return 0; }
  return 1
}

# The stamp is the LAST line on purpose (a truncated write leaves it unset) and is kept
# bare on purpose: the write condition above anchors on it with $, so an inline comment
# here would fail that match and rewrite this file on every single bootstrap.
CODEMAN_PREAMBLE=1.22.0
PREAMBLE
)
. "$PRE"; [ "${CODEMAN_PREAMBLE:-}" = 1.22.0 ] || { echo "preamble at $PRE is stale or truncated: rm it and re-run this block"; exit 1; }

Every later Bash call that touches the API starts with the same two loader lines from

the top of this section.

Why it is built this way, all of it load-bearing:

• It still fails closed. A missing or truncated file means delete_session is

undefined, and an undefined function is "command not found", which deletes nothing.

⚠️ This argument covers accidents, NOT a hostile file: a *complete* attacker-written

preamble can define delete_session and set the stamp, and sourcing executes it. What

defends against that is the path choice in the next bullet, not this one. Never

hand-roll a DELETE of your own, which is the one thing that would route around this.

• The version stamp is the LAST line, and the write condition greps for it. That one

choice covers staleness and truncation together: an old skill version's file and a

half-written one both fail the grep and are rewritten in place, so neither costs you a

round trip to diagnose and rm. The older [ -s "$PRE" ] condition could not tell a

complete file from a half-written one and left both to the post-source guard, which can

only refuse, not repair. That guard stays as the fail-closed backstop: if the rewrite

itself is cut short, CODEMAN_PREAMBLE is unset and the call stops.

• Not /tmp. On a shared machine /tmp is world-writable, so another local user

can pre-create the exact path you are about to . and have their code run as you.

$HOME-derived paths are not world-writable, and the file is written 0600 anyway.

The file holds the credential-*recovery code*, not a recovered password.

• Never put $$ in a clientId. It changes per call, so the "resend the identical

request" loop in §5.3 would stop being a duplicate and would retype the prompt,

submitting the turn twice. Use the fixed literal $CID.

• Only real environment variables (CODEMAN_*, HOME) survive, which is why the

preamble rebuilds $API and $SELF from them on every source rather than baking

them in.

If a call comes back as unparseable text instead of JSON, that is almost always a

plain-text 401: see §6 and the symptom gallery.

1. The fast path: N workers, one Bash call

**If the job is "spawn N claude workers, give them tasks, collect the answers", this

block is the whole thing. Run it, report, and stop reading. §2 onward is for jobs this

does not cover; you are not being careless by not reading them.**

Fill in the case names and the prompts, then run it as your FIRST Bash call: no

standalone preamble check before it (line one below IS that check), and no

reconnaissance. ls ~/codeman-cases answers nothing this block needs: invented

fresh names need no lookup, and spawn_worker refuses a name that already exists

rather than silently reusing it. Everything below is spawn_workers / sendwait /

last_text / delete_session from the §0 preamble, so there is nothing to assemble

and no per-call body to hand-build.

. "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/codeman-agent-$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID.sh" 2>/dev/null   # §0 loader
[ "${CODEMAN_PREAMBLE:-}" = 1.22.0 ] || { echo "preamble missing or stale; run the full §0 block"; exit 1; }
N=(alpha beta)                    # INVENT one fresh case name per worker; never list cases first
                                  # (a name may carry a mode: `beta:deepseek`, see below)
T=('reply with one line: the absolute path of your working directory'
   'reply with one line: your model name')            # tasks, same order as N

S=(); while read -r _ s; do S+=("$s"); done < <(spawn_workers "${N[@]}")   # concurrent
for i in "${!N[@]}"; do [ -n "${S[$i]:-}" ] || FAIL=1; done
[ -z "${FAIL:-}" ] || { echo "a spawn failed (stderr says why; §5.1): deleting the siblings"
  for s in "${S[@]}"; do [ -n "$s" ] && delete_session "$s" >/dev/null; done; exit 1; }

D=$(mktemp -d) || { for s in "${S[@]}"; do delete_session "$s" >/dev/null; done; exit 1; }
for i in "${!N[@]}"; do sendwait "${S[$i]}" "${T[$i]}" > "$D/$i" & done; wait
for i in "${!N[@]}"; do
  jq -ce --arg n "${N[$i]}" \
    '{worker:$n,delivered:.data.delivered,timedOut:.data.wait.timedOut,signal:.data.wait.signal}' \
    "$D/$i" || echo "{\"worker\":\"${N[$i]}\",\"error\":\"send produced no result\"}"
  echo "== ${N[$i]}"; last_text "${S[$i]}" || echo "(no response written)"
done
for i in "${!N[@]}"; do   # delete ONLY what finished; a timeout means STILL WORKING (§3 rule 5)
  if jq -e '.success and .data.delivered and (.data.wait.timedOut|not)' "$D/$i" >/dev/null 2>&1
  then delete_session "${S[$i]}" >/dev/null
  else echo "kept ${N[$i]} (${S[$i]}): its line above says why; re-wait or repair (§5.3), then delete_session it"
  fi
done; rm -rf "$D"

Measured against a live 1.18.0 server: two cold workers spawned and ready in 6.3 s,

both turns dispatched and both answers read in 4.0 s more. If your run takes minutes,

the time went into deliberation, not the API. The four things that actually cost time:

• Spawning serially. One worker per Bash call is one model turn per worker. & plus

wait, as above, makes N workers cost about what one costs.

• Reconnaissance turns before the spawn. A standalone preamble check, an

ls ~/codeman-cases, a list_sessions "to see what is there": each is a whole

model turn spent learning something this block already handles (line one performs

the preamble check, invented names need no listing, and spawn_worker refuses

collisions). A live two-worker run spent ~12 s of its 28 s total on exactly two

such turns; the API work in between was under 10 s.

• Re-deriving the happy path from §5.1 + §5.2 + §5.3 + §5.10. That is what the

preamble functions exist to end. Compose them; do not rebuild them. The tells that

you are rebuilding anyway: a for loop around quick-start, a poll on .data.pid,

a bespoke ready() or spawn() of your own. Each is a worse copy of a function

already sitting in your preamble; the live run that wrote them spawned serially,

polled pid for nothing, and shipped its workers without lineage.

• Verifying what is already checked for you. Two verifications specifically are not

worth a call here, because spawn_worker carries them: the hooks check (it refuses a

name that resolved to a hook-less directory with one local grep, so a worker it hands

back always has a working stop and sendwait is trustworthy), and the pid poll,

which is dead weight because wait-output already blocks on the composer.

Four things this block leans on, each one link away, no detour needed to run it:

• Those case names must be fresh scratch names: they create

~/codeman-cases/<name>, not your repo. A name that already means something (a

linked case, a pre-existing directory) is refused by spawn_worker rather than

silently reused. Spawning where the work actually is (a linked case, a git worktree)

is a different call, and picking the wrong one is the costliest mistake in this

skill: §5.1. Those workspaces do get hooks now, unless the operator disabled it.

• sendwait supplies the \r, picks a fresh seq, and self-heals a stranded Enter.

A prompt without the \r is never submitted (§3), a reused seq is silently

swallowed as an already-applied duplicate, and an Enter eaten by an Ink repaint

strands the prompt on the composer until a bare \r follows: all three are reasons

to let sendwait build the call rather than hand-rolling it.

• Each sendwait costs that worker one billed turn, as does every prompt you send it.
• Deleting the sessions does not remove the case directories. They are marked as

agent-created, so GET /api/v1/cases/agent-created lists them for cleanup: §5.14.

DeepSeek Harness workers

The block above spawns claude workers. Any entry in N may instead name a mode

(beta:deepseek), and **a deepseek worker is driven by the same four verbs, with no

change to the rest of the block**: spawn_workers waits for its composer, sendwait

blocks on its real end-of-turn signal, last_text reads its answer, delete_session

removes it.

That is true of no other non-claude mode, and it is worth knowing why: the DeepSeek

Harness TUI reports idle/working/blocked to Codeman over the supervisor contract it

implements, so dsh is the one external CLI with definitive stop/blocked signals

instead of guessed-from-silence ones — and it writes a structured transcript, which is

what last-response reads for it. shell, opencode, codex, gemini, antigravity,

pi, grok and omp have neither and still need markers (§5.5).

Three things to know before you spawn one:

• It needs a pane-capable profile. dsh ships only web/headless, so the terminal

agent is always an installed profile. GET /api/v1/deepseek/status answers both

questions separately (available = the binary, runnable = a profile that can drive a

pane); a spawn without one fails with OPERATION_FAILED rather than falling back.

• Do not task it on the strength of a stop alone. The harness reports idle at

boot ~300 ms *before* its composer paints (measured 2.26 s vs 2.56 s), so a sendwait

fired straight after quick-start resolves on that boot signal, reports a turn that

never ran, and leaves the prompt in a pane that was not yet taking input. Letting

spawn_worker gate on readiness is what steps past that edge; it is not optional.

• A profile that does not implement the contract looks like a hang. Codeman cannot

know at spawn time whether one does. The tell is a sendwait that times out on a

worker whose pane clearly finished: that profile is one of them, so drive it with

markers instead.

2. What do you want to do?

One row per job. Acting on this table alone is correct; the §5 links are the detail.

| I want to | Call | Detail |

|-----------|------|--------|

| start a worker where the work is | POST /api/v1/quick-start {"caseName":…}, which creates ~/codeman-cases/<name> unless the name is already a case. Any other path (a git worktree): POST /api/v1/sessions {"workingDir":…} then POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/interactive. Both install hooks by default, so expect full signals in either, and verify rather than assume. N workers means N worktrees | §5.1 |

| know a new worker can accept a prompt | GET .../wait-output?match=shift+tab&from=buffer (urlencode the +); a deepseek worker draws ❯ instead, and its boot stop fires ~300 ms BEFORE that, so never read the signal as readiness | §5.2 |

| deliver a task and know when it finished | POST .../input with "input":"…\r", clientId, seq, "wait":true. Resolves on stop, so it is trustworthy where the signal is real: claude mode with hooks (installed by default, but the operator can disable it and remote sessions never get them) and deepseek mode through its status bridge. Costs the worker one billed turn | §5.3 |

| know a hook-less worker finished | it has no stop, and wait:true there resolves on flapping idle without erroring: make it print a split, unique marker and wait-output on that instead | §5.5 |

| read the answer | GET .../last-response, polled (claude, codex and deepseek write a transcript; empty for the other modes) | §5.4 |

| know if it is alive | GET .../wait?until=exit&timeout=1000: an immediate signal:"exit" means dead. status and pid both lie | §5.6 |

| know if it is stuck | GET .../active-tools and GET .../run-summary are structured and free; two terminal?tail= samples are the crude fallback | §5.6 |

| make a runaway worker stop | POST .../input {"input":"\u001b"} (ESC, no \r). Deleting the session would destroy the conversation instead | §5.7 |

| resume a worker halted on a usage limit | POST .../auto-resume {"enabled":true}. Respawn and Ralph are not the remedy: respawn runs /clear | §5.8 |

| give a worker big input | write a file into its workspace with your own tools and send one short line pointing at it. The composer takes 65536 characters, single-line, newlines stripped | §5.9 |

| watch N workers at once | one in-flight wait per worker (per-session waiter cap 16); fan-out shapes differ for claude and shell | §5.10 |

| find yourself, list what exists | GET /api/v1/sessions, match your $SELF by prefix | §5.11 |

| read or record what the user wants | GET/PUT .../intent, and POST .../readmymind to predict | §5.12 |

| talk to a claude worker directly | ListAgents / SendMessage, when the feature is on at both ends | §5.13 |

| clean up | delete_session "$SID" per id you created. Case directories and git worktrees are not removed with it; GET /api/v1/cases/agent-created lists the scratch case dirs your spawns left behind, for you to report | §5.14 |

3. Rules digest

Ten one-liners. Each breaks something concrete; the reason is one link away.

• End every input with \r or Enter is never sent and the text sits unsubmitted

(§5.3).

• Never branch on .data.status. It reads idle mid-turn and idle on a dead

worker (§5.6).

• Split your markers. Your typed command echoes into the output stream, so an

unsplit marker matches before the command runs

(§5.5).

• Match single space-free tokens against TUI output. A TUI positions words with

cursor moves, so multi-word matches are unreliable there

(§5.2).

• A wait timeout is a 200, not an error. Loop over short waits; the clamp and the

applied wait.timeoutMs are in

endpoints.md.

• Signals are edge-triggered with no history. Register the waiter before the

event can happen; a stop that fires with no waiter is unobservable afterwards

(§5.10).

• Never delete without delete_session. The server lets a session delete itself

(§4).

• One in-flight wait per worker. The per-session waiter cap is 16 and abandoned

waits count against it (§5.10).

• Every message you send a worker costs it a billed turn, including a readiness

ping and an interrupted turn (§5.7).

10. Never answer another session's dialog. Approving a permission prompt you did

not raise authorizes an action the user never saw (§4).

4. Safety rules

You are yourself a session on this server, and the API has no undo.

• Never act on your own session, and know that delete_session is the ONLY guard.

The server has no self-protection: a session that DELETEs its own id succeeds and

dies silently (verified live). **Always delete through delete_session "$SID" from

§0; never write a bare curl -X DELETE and never reintroduce the

is_self … || curl -X DELETE … shape.** That older form failed open: with the

function undefined (a missing or truncated preamble file, see §0) bash returns 127,

the || branch fires, and the delete runs with no self-check at all. Wrapping the

request inside the guard is what makes a lost preamble delete nothing instead of

deleting you. Apply the same prefix-both-directions reasoning before any kill,

respawn, or input call you write by hand.

• Mutating calls you may make unprompted (this is an allowlist):

POST /api/v1/quick-start; POST /api/v1/sessions + POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/interactive

(or /shell) for a directory the user's own task named; POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/input;

and DELETE /api/v1/sessions/:id only for a session you created in this

conversation, by exact id. Keep a list of the ids you create. Everything else

mutating needs the user to have asked for it.

• Never call these unless the user explicitly asked, naming the target:
• DELETE /api/cases/:name recursively **deletes a real directory of the user's

code** from disk. One wrong case name destroys work that was never yours.

• DELETE /api/sessions (no id) is a bulk kill of every session, the user's

real work included. DELETE /api/subagents/:agentId kills one background agent;

DELETE /api/subagents (no id) does *not* kill anything, it clears the watcher's

map and timers, which blinds every subagent surface in the UI until they are

rediscovered. Neither is yours to call.

• respawn / ralph / orchestrator / cron mutations: respawn runs /clear (wipes a

conversation), orchestrator state is a single global slot, cron jobs outlive you.

• PUT /api/settings, POST /api/system/update: global UI settings; server restart.
• POST /api/approvals/:id/answer. It types a digit, an Esc or free text into

whichever session raised the prompt. Approving another session's permission

dialog authorizes a tool call the user never saw, from a session that is not

yours. Answer only a prompt raised by a worker you created, and only when the

user asked you to.

• Never spawn a worker into the directory you are editing, and give N workers N

git worktrees rather than one shared checkout. Two agents in one working tree

interleave writes and each reads the other's half-finished files; a git checkout

in one yanks the tree out from under the other. Creating worktrees changes the

user's repository state, so say that you did; removing one discards any

uncommitted work inside it, so ask first (§5.1).

• Never tmux kill-session, pkill tmux, pkill claude. The API is the only interface.
• Sessions count against a global cap of 50 (and, in multi-user mode, a per-user

cap of 25 that fires the same 409). Case creation is uncapped and writes real

directories. Clean up every session you start, and never retry quick-start in a

loop.

5. Recipes → reference/verbs.md

The per-verb detail lives in reference/verbs.md, loaded on demand

so it is not paid for on every skill load. Section numbers and anchors are unchanged, so

a §5.4 reference still resolves. **§1 already covers the common job without any of

these**; open the one row you actually hit.

| Open | When |

|------|------|

| 5.1 Where to spawn | the work is not a fresh scratch case: a linked case, a git worktree, any path that already existed. Hooks are absent there, which silently breaks send-and-wait. The costliest mistake in this skill |

| 5.2 Readiness | a worker never drew its composer, or you need the trust-dialog ladder by hand |

| 5.3 Send a task and wait | the sendwait body, its signals, and the duplicate-resend loop |

| 5.4 Read the answer | last_text came back empty, or the mode is not claude/codex/deepseek |

| 5.5 Markers for hook-less workers | the worker has no stop hook: synchronize on a split, unique printed marker |

| 5.6 Alive and stuck | is it dead or just slow? status and pid both lie |

| 5.7 Interrupt without destroying | a runaway worker you want to stop but keep |

| 5.8 Usage limits | a worker halted on a subscription limit |

| 5.9 Big input via the workspace | the prompt is larger than one composer line |

| 5.10 Fan out | many workers at once: waiter caps, and why signals are edge-triggered |

| 5.11 List and find yourself | enumerate sessions, or match $SELF by prefix |

| 5.12 Read My Mind | read or record what the user wants for a case |

| 5.13 Messaging claude workers | ListAgents / SendMessage instead of the HTTP path |

| 5.14 Clean up | what deleting a session does not remove, and how to list the case dirs you left |

6. Setup and auth

You need this section only when the API answers something jq cannot parse, or when

you are on a server old enough to lack the wait endpoints. Endpoint-level detail lives

in endpoints.md.

Credentials

Auth is active only when the server has CODEMAN_PASSWORD (or is in multi-user mode).

Your session has usually inherited that password already, which is why the §0

preamble tries $CODEMAN_PASSWORD first: Codeman does not strip it. buildClaudeEnv()

(src/session-cli-builder.ts) spreads the server's entire process.env into the

session and deletes only COLORTERM and CLAUDECODE, and the tmux spawn path applies

no denylist either. On a stock password-protected install (install.sh writes the

password into the systemd unit or launchd plist, so the server process carries it) the

value is simply in your environment.

It is not guaranteed, though, which is what the fallbacks are for. A tmux pane

inherits the tmux server's environment, and that server can predate the password;

and the data dir's .env is only ever read by the codeman CLI itself, never loaded

into the web server's environment.

Fallback 1, in the §0 preamble already: the data dir's .env, the same file

codeman attach reads. It is hand-authored; nothing ever writes it.

Fallback 2, for a stock install where the supervisor definition is the only copy on

disk. Append this to the preamble file (before its version-stamp line) and re-source:

if [ -z "${CODEMAN_PASSWORD:-}" ]; then    # install.sh puts it in the service definition
  UNIT="$HOME/.config/systemd/user/codeman-web.service"
  PLIST="$HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/com.codeman.web.plist"
  if [ -f "$UNIT" ]; then
    # install.sh backslash-escapes " and \ in the unit value; undo it or a password
    # containing either recovers wrong and auth fails.
    CODEMAN_PASSWORD=$(sed -n 's/^Environment="CODEMAN_PASSWORD=\(.*\)"$/\1/p' "$UNIT" | head -1 | sed 's/\\\(["\\]\)/\1/g')
  elif [ -f "$PLIST" ]; then
    # install.sh XML-escapes the plist value; undo it (& LAST, mirroring escape order).
    CODEMAN_PASSWORD=$(awk '/<key>CODEMAN_PASSWORD<\/key>/{getline; print}' "$PLIST" | sed -n 's/.*<string>\(.*\)<\/string>.*/\1/p' \
      | sed -e 's/&lt;/</g' -e 's/&gt;/>/g' -e 's/&amp;/\&/g')
  fi
fi

⚠️ A 401 is plain text, not the JSON envelope, so on a password-protected server

every jq in these recipes dies with jq: parse error instead of showing

UNAUTHORIZED. If that happens, check the status with -w '%{http_code}'; if it is

401 and no fallback found a credential, **stop and tell the user you need

credentials**. The same is true of the guards that run before any handler: the Host

allowlist (403 Forbidden: host not allowed), the Origin/CSRF guard, and the auth

rate limiter's 429 all answer in plain text. The hook-secret bypass covers only

/api/hook-event and /api/status-telemetry, never session control.

In multi-user mode accounts live in users.json and the credential is a real user's

name and password. A recovered CODEMAN_PASSWORD still often works: bootstrapInitialAdmin()

(user-store.ts:417-427) creates the FIRST admin from CODEMAN_USERNAME/CODEMAN_PASSWORD

on first boot when no users exist, so on a stock multi-user install that pair usually IS

a valid admin login until someone changes it. Try it once; if it fails, ask the user

rather than retrying (ten failures rate-limit the address).

Server version

The wait endpoints first ship in Codeman 1.13.0, but do not gate on the version

number: a dev build can serve them while reporting an older version. Probe instead.

GET .../wait on a real session id answering 404 with an .error starting Route

means the server predates them (fall back to polling GET .../terminal?tail= and say

so). Session ... not found means your session id is wrong, not the server.

Where the API is unreachable

• Remote-SSH cases do not export CODEMAN_MUX/CODEMAN_API_URL into the session,

so the §0 guard fails closed and you refuse to act. That is correct behavior, not a

bug to work around.

• Inside a Docker case, a loopback-bound server is unreachable from the container,

and CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOOKS=1 does not fix it: that opens a hooks-only

listener, so hook events flow but /api/v1/* stays refused. Report it rather than

retrying; making it reachable is an operator decision.

Everything else (endpoint tables, per-mode signal table, error codes, capacity limits,

Docker/remote caveats): reference/endpoints.md. Fan-out

orchestration and blocked-worker handling: reference/recipes.md.