Headless Chat

Send one prompt to Anna from a script, wait for the answer on stdout, and collect long runs later or in CI

cloudthinker chat -p submits a prompt to Anna and waits for the answer. Anna’s answer is the only thing on stdout, so the command drops straight into a pipe.

Send a prompt

cloudthinker chat -p "Name the three biggest cost drivers in a typical AWS account, one line each."

Progress, the run ID, and the continuation hint go to stderr. That split is what keeps the command pipeable:

cloudthinker chat -p "Summarize yesterday's incidents" > summary.md
cloudthinker chat -p "List unused EBS volumes" | grep vol-

Continue a conversation

Every terminal run prints continue_with=<conversation_id> on stderr. Pass that ID, or the run ID, to keep the thread:

cloudthinker chat -p "Draft the rollout plan"
cloudthinker chat -p "Remove the risky step" --continue 0f9e364e-9c34-406e-be7d-52a143fede85

The same conversation is visible in the web app through the web_url printed beside the hint.

Submit now, collect later

A long investigation does not need to hold your terminal. --no-wait returns as soon as the run is queued:

cloudthinker chat -p "Which S3 buckets have no lifecycle policy?" --no-wait --json

Collect the answer from any machine later:

cloudthinker chat status 7d5fae84-be6f-45fa-802f-5041f0ff5d42 --wait
cloudthinker chat ls --limit 10
cloudthinker chat ls --conversation 0f9e364e-9c34-406e-be7d-52a143fede85 --json

A client-side timeout never cancels the run. --timeout bounds only how long the CLI waits; the run keeps going server-side and the CLI prints the chat status command that resumes it.

Machine-readable output

--json writes one envelope to stdout instead of the plain answer.

Field	Meaning
run_id	The run to poll with chat status
conversation_id	The thread to pass to --continue
status	pending, running, succeeded, failed, or approval required
answer	Anna’s final answer, or null while the run is unfinished
web_url	The same conversation in the web app

The immediate --no-wait --json response has no answer field. Fetch it later with chat status.

cloudthinker chat -p "Check the error budget" --json | jq -r '.answer'

Exit codes

A pipeline can branch on the outcome without parsing text.

Code	Meaning
0	The run finished and the answer was printed
1	The run failed, or the run ID is unknown
2	Bad usage, or the request was rejected by a workspace policy
3	Not logged in, or the credential expired
4	The CLI stopped waiting. The run continues server-side
5	The run paused for an approval in the browser

chat ls and chat status without --wait exit 0 after a successful fetch. chat status --wait returns the run’s outcome code.

Use it in CI

Give the job a token, keep stdout for the answer, and let the exit code decide the outcome:

export CLOUDTHINKER_TOKEN="$CLOUDTHINKER_CI_TOKEN"

if cloudthinker chat -p "Review last night's failed deployments" --timeout 900 > report.md; then
  echo "report ready"
else
  case $? in
    4) echo "still running, collect it in the next job" ;;
    5) echo "waiting for an approval in the browser" ;;
    *) exit 1 ;;
  esac
fi

Related

Authentication

Give a pipeline a credential of its own

Reference

Every command, flag, variable, and exit code