Spawn and monitor sidekicks

A sidekick is an AI working on a task in the background. You ask the AI in your chat for something long; instead of holding up the conversation, it spawns a sidekick room, returns a codename, and keeps chatting.

1. Spawn one#

Two ways:

• Implicit: just ask. "Read the last 30 commits on app/ai/ and write a summary." If the AI judges the task long, it spawns a sidekick automatically.
• Explicit: /sidekick <task>. Forces it regardless of the AI's judgement.

The reply in the parent room will look like:

🤖 Sidekick brave-penguin spawned for: "Read the last 30 commits on app/ai/ and write a summary."

The codename is your handle to monitor it.

2. Monitor#

Three surfaces:

• Sidekicks panel (right sidebar, ⏵ button in chat header). Lists every active sidekick in the room with its codename, status, step count, and a "open room" button. Live-updates via WS.
• /sidekick:status <codename> in the composer — prints a one-line status to chat.
• Click the codename in the spawn message — opens the sidekick room. You see the sidekick's thinking, tool calls, and tentative output live.

3. The sidekick room#

A sidekick room is read-only — you watch but don't type. The header has a ← Parent room link to navigate back.

When the sidekick finishes, it posts its final summary in the parent room as a swp.sidekick.result event:

🤖 brave-penguin completed. Found 3 candidate papers on surface codes:

• Paper 1 (link)
• Paper 2 (link)
• Paper 3 (link)

4. Cancel#

If a sidekick is going in the wrong direction:

• Sidekicks panel → Cancel button.
• /sidekick:cancel <codename> in the composer.
• API: POST /v1/rooms/{room_id}/sidekicks/{task_id}/cancel.

Your concurrency budget frees up immediately.

5. Caps you'll hit#

6. Context modes#

When the AI spawns a sidekick, it picks context_mode:

• task_only (default, cheap) — the sidekick sees only the task description. No conversation history.
• full — the sidekick gets the parent room's recent history. Use when the task references "this", "the file we discussed earlier", etc.

If you want to override, ask explicitly: "Spawn a sidekick with full context."

7. Sidekick spawning sidekicks#

A sidekick can itself spawn sub-sidekicks. They count against the same concurrency budget. Use sparingly — three-level nesting is usually a sign the original task wasn't decomposed well; consider a plan instead.

Where to go next#

• Use the planner — for sequential structured work.
• Concepts: Sidekicks.
• API: Sidekicks.