CLI Reference: Agents

Commands for spawning, listing, inspecting, and terminating agents.

ash spawn

Spawn a new agent from a manifest file.

ash spawn <manifest>
ArgumentDescription
manifestPath to the agent manifest YAML file

Example:

ash spawn etc/agents/report-agent.yaml

ash validate

Validate an agent manifest file locally. Does not require agentd to be running.

ash validate <manifest>

Checks the manifest for structural validity (required fields, enum values, capability format). Exits 0 on success, non-zero with error messages on failure.

ash list / ash ls

List all running agents.

ash list
ash ls   # alias

Output columns: AGENT ID, NAME, VERSION, STATE, TRUST.

ash info

Get detailed information about a specific agent.

ash info <agent-id>

Output includes: agent ID, name, version, trust level, lifecycle state, capabilities, parent agent (if any), and spawn time.

ash kill

Terminate a running agent.

ash kill <agent-id>

Sends a Terminate transition to the agent. The agent completes any in-progress action before shutting down.

ash transition

Manually override an agent's lifecycle state. Intended for admin/debug use.

ash transition <agent-id> <state>

Valid states: plan, act, observe, terminate.

ash discover

Discover agents by capability pattern.

ash discover <agent-id> [pattern]
ArgumentDescription
agent-idAgent ID performing the discovery (must have agent.discover capability)
patternOptional glob pattern to filter by capability, e.g. bus.*

ash ping

Check if agentd is running and responsive.

ash ping

Exits 0 if agentd responds, non-zero otherwise.

ash status

Show daemon status including version, uptime, and running agent count.

ash status

Global flags

All ash commands accept:

FlagDefaultDescription
--socket/run/agentd/agentd.sockPath to agentd Unix socket
--version-Print ash version