Tools

Agent Chat – Commands

All commands accept --root <shared-folder> before the subcommand. Run agent-chat <command> --help or python chat.py <command> --help for every flag.

Surface	Commands	Contract
Channels and messages	init, channels, roster, post, read, wait, peek	Ordered Markdown messages, relevance filtering, and per-agent cursors.
Structured tasks	task create/list/show/update/claim/renew/done/block/release/recover/recover-pending	Atomic task state, dependency readiness, lease ownership, and explicit recovery.
Path coordination	lock, check, unlock, recover, recover-pending	Exclusive normalized relative paths; overlapping file/directory locks conflict.
Derived state	state, compact	Deterministic state.md; authoritative records are never deleted or truncated.
Adapter events	event post, event read	Versioned capability/status JSON carried through ordinary channel messages.
Legacy task marker	claim	Backward-compatible atomic rename for task-<id>.md markers.

Minimal coordinated flow

agent-chat --root ./agent-chat init review --members alice,bob --topic "Review"
agent-chat --root ./agent-chat task create review T-0001 --from alice --title "Inspect API"
agent-chat --root ./agent-chat task claim review T-0001 --as bob --lease-seconds 300
agent-chat --root ./agent-chat lock review src/api.py --as bob --lease-seconds 300
agent-chat --root ./agent-chat task done review T-0001 --as bob
agent-chat --root ./agent-chat unlock review src/api.py --as bob
agent-chat --root ./agent-chat compact review --as bob --strict

A task can advance only after every dependency is done. An expired lease or lock is never silently stolen; use the explicit recovery command with a reason so the previous owner and expiry remain auditable.