Chat and Interactive Shell

The chat command is the terminal face of the same assistant that powers Home (Assistant) in the app. It calls copilot.session.* on the sidecar — authenticate first, then ensure the sidecar is reachable (akos serve locally or AKOS_HEADLESS_URL).

One-shot message

Send a single prompt and wait for the reply (default timeout 30 s):

akos chat "summarize today's failed runs"
akos chat "draft a cron trigger for nightly backups"

Continue an existing session:

akos chat --session sess_abc "now add error handling to that flow"

Stream tokens as they arrive (ADR-0133 polling stream):

akos chat --stream "explain our egress policy"

Enqueue without waiting for the assistant to finish:

akos chat --no-wait "start a long research task"
akos chat sessions
akos chat show sess_abc --json

Options

Interactive readline shell

Open the portable slash-command shell (also used when you run akos with no args on a TTY):

akos chat --interactive
# shorthand:
akos chat -i

Type natural language or slash commands (/help, /flows, /inbox, …). Lists remember the last result so you can select by number (/run-flow 2, /approve 1).

Full-screen TUI

For the Ink-based terminal UI (transcript pane, themes, governance badges, proposal cards):

akos chat --tui

Requires a real TTY. Without one, the CLI exits with a hint to use --interactive or a one-shot message.

TUI highlights

• Themes — /theme ocean|grape|forest|ember|mono|midnight|sunset|nord; persisted in ~/.akos/tui.json. NO_COLOR forces monochrome.
• Editing — readline chords (Ctrl+A/E, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+U/K/Y), ↑/↓ history, Tab completes /commands and @mentions.
• Keybindings — optional overrides in ~/.akos/keys.json (approve, cancel, scroll).
• Governance — header badges for pending HITL and in-flight runs; Ctrl+G approves the next gate inline.
• Proposals — assistant flow/agent proposals render as cards; /apply <n> materializes the chosen proposal.
• Resume — transcripts reload from the sidecar when switching sessions (/sessions picker in TUI).
• Offline — unreachable sidecar shows a banner; the CLI can auto-start a local sidecar on first use.

Slash command cheat sheet

Full table (including /verticals, /theme, /cost, …): Command reference › Interactive shell.

Session management

akos chat sessions --json
akos chat show sess_abc
akos chat cancel sess_abc      # stop an in-progress turn
akos chat delete sess_abc     # remove session + transcript

Scripting copilot primitives

For automation that parses slash commands or builds proactive cards without the interactive shell:

akos copilot slash list
akos copilot slash parse "/run-flow nightly-backup"
akos copilot mention parse "ask @billing about limits"
akos copilot proactive '{"kind":"run.failed","runId":"run_1"}' --json

Registry-backed integration setup steps also surface in chat — see Connections (connections guide) and Integration setup.

Related topics

• Home (Assistant) — same copilot in the browser/desktop UI.
• Flows and Runs — /run-flow and scriptable flows run.
• Connections — /connect and OAuth completion from the shell.
• Knowledge and RAG — /knowledge and indexed docs for retrieval.
• Command reference — streaming, exit codes, non-TTY usage.