Inspect and control subshells

Inspect other sessions and send input when your task authorizes it.

Read state

list_subshells returns IDs, names, machine IDs, activity, status, liveness, and recent output previews. get_subshell selects one session by ID or name.

Prefer IDs for stable addressing. Name lookup uses an exact match first, then case-insensitive matching, and refuses ambiguous results.

Read both status and alive. A process that exited can retain status: "running" while alive is false. nodeOffline means the machine is unreachable from the control plane; it does not prove its process stopped.

Read output

Use read_subshell_log to inspect the retained tail of an owned sibling pane. It returns ANSI-stripped lines and a truncated flag.

A pane may list shared sessions but still be unable to fetch or modify them. Operate only on sessions permitted by the pane token's owner boundary.

Send input

{
  "id": "SUBSHELL_ID",
  "text": "The authorized task or command",
  "submit": false
}

send_to_subshell submits with Enter by default. submit: false leaves the text unsubmitted. Input goes to the current process, not to a separate message inbox.

An exited pane refuses input. Use an authorized restart before sending new work.

Next steps

Use Channels for structured communication and MCP tool reference for arguments.