Stoat mirrors a real-world coding-agent harness in the shell-mode-
toggle tradition — the upstream lets users press a chord to flip the
prompt buffer between an LLM agent and a direct shell, with both modes
driven by the same context. We never name the upstream brand here
(see security-and-trademarks.md); this
page documents which surface ports we ship, which we skip, and why.
The “Status” column uses the same vocabulary as the other parity
matrices in this repo:
- Tier 1 (live-driven) — implemented, exercised by tests against
the live framework, surface-stable.
- Tier 2 (scaffolded) — surface present and dispatched, body still
comes from a follow-up agent.
- Skipped — out of scope for stoat (or covered by a sibling CLI).
| Surface | Status | Notes |
|---|
Shell-mode toggle (/shell) | Tier 1 | Slash command + --shell-mode flag flip the REPL between agent mode (stoat>) and shell mode (stoat$). |
Ctrl-X chord | Tier 2 | Documented, but the slash form is the default — chord binding is per-terminal config. |
| Mode-tagged history | Tier 1 | /history renders > for agent lines, $ for shell lines. |
| Persistent cwd across shell turns | Skipped | Each shell command runs in its own bash -c subprocess; cd is intentionally not honored. Use --cwd to pin the working directory. |
| Surface | Status | Notes |
|---|
chimera stoat --version | Tier 1 | Prints chimera stoat 0.5.0. |
chimera stoat -p PROMPT | Tier 1 | One-shot agent turn. Honors --allowed-tools, --max-steps, --cwd, --json. |
chimera stoat --mode rpc | Tier 1 | Delegates to chimera.cli.code in JSON-RPC mode. |
chimera stoat --mode print (without -p) | Tier 1 | Usage error, exit 2. |
chimera stoat sessions list | Tier 1 | Walks ~/.chimera/eventlog/stoat-*/. |
chimera stoat sessions show <id> | Tier 1 | Loads summary.json + every event-*.json. |
chimera stoat sessions cost | Tier 1 | Re-uses chimera.mink.cost.compute_summary. |
chimera stoat share <id> | Tier 1 | JSON / Markdown render to file or stdout. |
chimera stoat agents list/show | Tier 2 | Handler stub; eventual integration with shared agent registry. |
chimera stoat bench <suite> | Tier 2 | Handler stub; HumanEval / tau-bench wiring follows shrew/ferret. |
chimera stoat serve | Tier 2 | ACP / IDE-extension server is a follow-up. Use chimera ferret serve --http for the cross-CLI HTTP transport. |
| Surface | Status | Notes |
|---|
Kimi-first via $MOONSHOT_API_KEY | Tier 1 | Default model kimi-k2.6, OpenAI-compatible against api.moonshot.ai/v1. |
$STOAT_MODEL env override | Tier 1 | Pin a model id without setting any provider key. |
| Anthropic / OpenAI fallback | Tier 1 | Per chimera.providers.factory.create_provider prefix inference. |
OpenRouter via vendor/name ids | Tier 1 | $OPENROUTER_API_KEY + slash-shaped id. |
Ollama via name:tag ids | Tier 1 | $OLLAMA_HOST / OLLAMA_API_KEY. |
| Auto-resolved model probe (no key) | Tier 1 | Friendly ValueError listing every supported env var. |
See providers.md for the full chain table.
Stoat ships a deliberately small palette to keep the toggle the focus.
| Slash | Status | Notes |
|---|
/help | Tier 1 | Renders the palette. |
/exit / /quit | Tier 1 | Break the loop. |
/clear | Tier 1 | Drops conversation history. |
/model | Tier 1 | Show or set the active model id. |
/shell | Tier 1 | The headline toggle. |
/cost | Tier 1 | Running USD rollup. |
/history | Tier 1 | Mode-tagged review. |
/init, /agent, /checkpoint, /yolo, /branch, /switch | Skipped | Available via chimera code for users who want the full 19-slash palette. |
| Surface | Status | Notes |
|---|
Eventlog at ~/.chimera/eventlog/stoat-*/ | Tier 1 | Mirrors weasel/shrew/otter. |
| Cost rollup parity (text/JSON/CSV) | Tier 1 | Same body as mink/weasel/shrew. |
Share to ~/.chimera/shares/stoat-*.* | Tier 1 | JSON + Markdown. |
| Share via HTTP / HTML | Skipped | mink/otter ship the full sink palette; stoat stays minimal. |
- VS Code extension parity — stoat does not bundle an editor
extension. The cross-CLI ACP / HTTP transports live under ferret /
otter; users who want IDE integration can drive ferret’s ACP server
pointed at a stoat-flavored agent factory.
- Zsh shell plugin — stoat does not ship a shell plugin. The
toggle is internal to the stoat REPL.
- MCP
mcp sub-command group — MCP integration is reachable via
the cross-CLI plugin loader (see chimera plugins). Stoat’s
per-CLI surface stays small.
- OAuth login flow — stoat reads
$MOONSHOT_API_KEY from the env
(filesystem path ~/.kimi/config.json is referenced in upstream docs
as a fact about the host CLI’s config layout, not something stoat
reads). Operators wanting OAuth-issued tokens can use the shared
chimera.auth flow.
