The console: hotl

Drive the agent from a full-screen terminal console — streaming transcript, a loop-motif activity strip, modal permission asks, and a vim-style input editor. Assumes a working agent (quickstart.md).

Launch

hotl                  # new session
hotl <id-prefix>      # continue a specific earlier session
hotl --resume         # pick from recent sessions (numbered list, newest first)
hotl resume [id]      # same thing, spelled as a subcommand

Bare hotl is the console (the tui subcommand and the old line-based REPL are gone). It needs a real terminal: piped stdin/stdout exits with a pointer at hotl -p "prompt", the headless path for scripts and CI.

The console is a pure ACP client of the same engine -p headless uses — same permission gate, same session logs, same hotl undo afterwards.

Theming

The console wears the same palette as hotl watch, from the same [settings.theme] table in ~/.config/hotl/config.toml:

[settings.theme]
preset = "nord"       # tokyo-night (the default) | catppuccin | gruvbox | nord | dracula
accent = "#88c0d0"    # optional per-slot #rrggbb overrides

Eight slots: active (working), blocked (waiting on you), idle (settled), ink/muted/faint (text tiers), accent, and band (the strip background). An unknown preset or invalid color falls back with a one-line warning — the console always launches.

The screen

Top to bottom:

1. Transcript — your prompts (❯ ), the streaming reply, tool cards [✓ bash] cargo test · 2s, and dim notices (retries, fallbacks, compaction). With the input empty, j/k scroll it; it snaps back to following the bottom on your next prompt.

2. Activity strip — one line that tells you what the turn is doing, animated as a loop drawing itself:

   You see	It means
   · ─ · resting	idle — your move (after a turn it also shows real token usage)
   the loop drawing itself, then turning · “thinking”	the model is reasoning
   the loop turning · “writing · ~N tok”	the reply is streaming (~N tok is a chars/4 approximation; exact usage arrives at the end of the turn)
   a dot orbiting the loop · tool name	a tool is running
   the loop halted with a gap · “waiting on you”	a permission ask — the gap is you; nothing moves until you answer
   the loop coiling up · “folding history…”	context compaction

3. Input — bordered editor, title shows -- INSERT -- / -- NORMAL --.

4. Hint row — the keys that matter right now.

There is no bell, ever — salience is visual only. hotl watch is the thing that pings across panes; the console itself is silent.

Prompting and steering

Type and press Enter to prompt. Typing while a turn runs is steering: submit and it becomes a pinned ⤷ chip — dim while queued, and the engine folds it in at the next step. Shift/Alt+Enter inserts a newline.

Permission asks

An ask freezes the loop (the gap glyph) and opens a modal with the tool summary — and a loud ⚠ line when a protected path is involved. y allows. n starts a deny: type an optional reason, Enter sends it (the reason goes to the model verbatim; Esc backs out of the deny).

Interrupting

• Esc (with the input empty) — interrupt the running turn; press again to insist.
• Ctrl-C — cancel the turn while one runs; quit from idle.

Vim keys

On by default; vim_mode = false under [behavior] in config.toml pins plain insert-mode editing (configuration.md).

Keys	Do
Esc / i a I A o O	Normal mode / back to Insert (with the usual cursor placement)
h l 0 $ w b e	Motions, with counts (3w)
d c y + motion	Delete / change / yank; dd cc yy for the whole line
x p u	Delete char · paste · undo (one level)
j k	Scroll the transcript when the input is empty; move lines otherwise
Enter	Submit (either mode)

The $EDITOR escape hatch

Ctrl-E (any mode) or :e (normal mode) suspends the console and opens the current input in $EDITOR (falls back to vi). Save and quit to bring the text back into the input; quit without saving to leave it unchanged.