Agents

Several agent CLIs

In Settings → Providers, Agent CLIs has one row per CLI: Claude Code, Codex, Grok and opencode.

  • The row's state: installed, with the executable's name next to it, or not found in PATH. The app looks for each one in your shell's PATH.
  • The switch: enables the CLI. A CLI that is neither installed nor enabled cannot be enabled, and turning off the last enabled one has no effect.
  • The install command: appears on the row of whatever was not found, with a button that copies it. The app does not install or update third-party CLIs. The exception is Claude Code, which an agent panel offers to install in one click when it is missing.

An enabled CLI starts appearing in the three places where an agent is born: in ⌘K, with one new agent entry per CLI, on the command bar and in voice, which accepts the spellings transcription produces for their names.

What is the same in all of them

  • The panel with the CLI's terminal, and its name in the header, next to the agent's name.
  • Each panel's states and the alerts: working, waiting for you, ready, crashed, ended.
  • The back of the panel, with the subject the agent writes about itself and the delivery history.
  • Per-file authorship, before the commit. See the Git panel.
  • Dismissing and calling back with the conversation. See creating and closing.
  • The canvas tools: its own browser, opening panels, reading what another agent is doing and bringing colleagues in.

What belongs to one CLI only

  • Picking a question's option by speaking works on Claude Code's multiple-choice questions. On the others, the question is read aloud just the same and the answer goes as text, typed or dictated.
  • Installing and pinning the version is Claude Code's. The Claude Code version menu, in Settings → Agents, pins one of the versions present on the machine and, while pinned, turns off automatic updating.
  • Registering installations asks for a .claude folder, under Claude installations, on the same screen. An agent picks among them at creation and in the panel's context menu. See accounts and profiles.
  • opencode's model is chosen inside it: the models it runs depend on the accounts you logged into, and the canvas sends it no model at all. On the others, the canvas's default model is chosen in project settings.

Switching an agent's CLI

The panel's context menu does not switch the CLI of an existing agent: each agent lives in the CLI it was born in, including when it is called back after being dismissed. What the menu offers is switching its account, within the same CLI.