Commands¶

Type / to open the command picker with fuzzy search.

Built-in Commands¶

Goals and auto-continue¶

/goal <objective> creates an auto-continuing goal and asks the agent to pursue it. /goal set <objective> is equivalent. While the agent is working, creation stays queued: Enter waits for the next turn; Ctrl+Enter waits for acknowledgment at the next request in the current turn. The goal is not created or replaced until that queued command is consumed. Withdrawing the command back into the prompt and discarding it leaves the existing goal unchanged. The agent's create_goal tool requires an unfinished goal to be completed or cleared before another can be created.

All goal controls above run immediately, including with Enter or Ctrl+Enter while the agent is working. They neither enter the message queue nor cancel the current turn. For example, /goal auto off disables future goal continuations while letting the current turn finish; /goal resume enables continuation once idle. Existing queued user requests are left unchanged.

Auto-continue runs only while idle. Queued user messages run first. By default, smelt.settings.auto_continue = "goal", so only active auto goals continue; if the same goal remains active afterward, auto-continue resumes. When a provider returns a quota or rate-limit reset time, an eligible auto-continue schedules its next continue after that reset. Set smelt.settings.auto_continue = "off" to disable idle continuation, or "always" to continue any idle session even when no goal is active.

Conversation copy¶

/copy copies the latest non-empty conversation message. Pass N to copy the latest N messages in chronological order, or filter first with --role user or --role assistant (-r also works). Multiple messages include User: and Assistant: headers automatically; --headers also adds a header to a single message. /yank accepts the same arguments.

Local diff viewer¶

/diff opens two centered side-by-side panes: a collapsible changed-file tree and one continuous, syntax-highlighted unified diff. Click a file to jump to its changes, or click a folder to expand/collapse it. Pressing selects a folder; releasing over the same row toggles it without changing the preview or its position. Folders and unchanged-context folds use ▶ / ▼ triangles. Both panes share directory-first file order. Scrolling the preview, changing focus, and refreshing the current file leave deliberately collapsed folders closed; explicit next/previous-file navigation reveals the destination's parents. Drag the shared pane divider to trade file-tree width for preview width. The split survives refreshes and staging operations, keeps both panes usable, and does not move focus, selection, or the current preview position. There is no enclosing frame, branch header, or command footer.

The tree has two fixed, non-collapsible lowercase sections separated by a blank row, each with its own file count and line totals:

• unstaged: index to worktree changes, including untracked files marked ?.
• staged: HEAD to index changes, using the empty tree before the first commit.

Partially staged files appear in both sections with distinct patches and counts. Even changes that cancel out against HEAD remain visible in their respective sections. Ignored files are excluded. The read-only preview follows section and directory order, with a blank row and dim full-width divider between files.

Fugitive-style shortcuts stage or unstage one file without editing the worktree. An asynchronous refresh moves it between sections and updates patches and totals. Selection advances within the source section, falling back to the previous file. Clearing a section shows an empty state rather than following the file into the other section, so repeated staging cannot immediately undo the final operation. Empty sidebar sections show only their heading and (0) count. The preview shows all staged or nothing staged when the active section is cleared; a repository with no local changes shows clean. Status labels are lowercase and omit sentence punctuation. Sidebar wheel and scrollbar scrolling move only the viewport: the selected file and preview stay unchanged, even when selection scrolls offscreen. Keyboard navigation reveals the selection; clicking selects the indicated file. Staging or unstaging also reveals an offscreen selection immediately, while an already-visible selection keeps its screen position.

Filenames stay neutral. Status letters are colored: added/untracked green, modified yellow, deleted/conflicted red, and renamed blue. Unresolved paths are marked U; their worktree patch compares against the ours merge stage, with a metadata row when Git has no patch. Nonzero line counts follow each filename or section label with single spaces, using softer green/red theme colors. Zero counts are hidden and binary files show binary. Preview + / - markers retain the bright green/red foregrounds of edit_file. Added/deleted backgrounds fill the preview width, including line numbers and trailing space. Stronger inline backgrounds identify changed text without replacing syntax colors. Narrow panes abbreviate large counts and prioritize filenames over indentation.

Git acquisition and compact patch indexing run off the UI thread. Untracked files are batched through a private temporary index and object directory, keeping Git's own ignore rules, filters, encodings, and attributes. One root pathspec avoids all-pairs matching in large file sets, without a subprocess per file or writes to the repository's index or object store.

Text and navigation become available without waiting for whole-file syntax. A background worker prioritizes visible rows, caches bounded syntax and inline chunks, and repaints as colors arrive. Inline comparisons use the same character and grapheme policy as edit_file. Large replacement blocks use viewport-only positional pairing; comparisons over 8 KiB retain plain row emphasis, and time budgets bound difficult comparisons. Inline results publish before distant syntax seeks. Syntax follows each file's language and tracks old/new source independently, including multiline comments and strings inside collapsed context. A distant jump into a huge file may show plain diff colors while the worker reconstructs syntax state; it never blocks scrolling or file selection. Parser checkpoints accelerate revisits. After visible work, the worker prefetches the first 128-256 rows of the previous and next files so Ctrl-J/Ctrl-K navigation can display cached syntax on its first frame.

Both panes retain only visible rows, even for million-line patches and trees with tens of thousands of files. Folder toggles update compact node indices, not rendered file tables. Binary, rename, mode-only, and no-newline changes have explicit metadata rows. Reading and indexing the patch remain linear in input size; expanding context needs no further Git commands. Closing cancels pending Git work and releases the syntax worker. Staging shortcuts apply in idle Normal mode or the sidebar, not inside a Vim selection or pending motion.

Refresh preserves expanded context, source-relative cursor/scroll anchors and horizontal pan. The title identifies loading, refreshing, staging and unstaging. If refresh fails, the previous snapshot stays visible and navigable, marked stale - r refresh. A successful index update followed by a failed refresh is reported as partial success, not as a failed stage/unstage. Stale snapshots cannot perform another index operation until a successful refresh.

The viewer is the bundled smelt.plugins.diff Lua plugin. Opt out through smelt.builtins.disable({ plugins = { "diff" } }) in early.lua.

Managed worktrees¶

Run /worktree with no arguments to pick an existing worktree, start creating one, or view worktree status. /worktree <name> [--base <ref>] creates or enters a managed worktree; /wt <name> [-b <ref>] is the short form. Entering a worktree switches smelt's real process working directory and reloads project context. See Managed worktrees.

Fast mode and notifications¶

/fast toggles accelerated provider inference for the current session. Explicit on, off, and toggle forms are available. The command reports an error rather than silently changing state when the active model does not advertise fast-mode support.

/notify defaults to once, which notifies after the next completed turn. on enables notifications for this session, off disables them for this session, clear removes the session override, and status reports the effective mode. Persistent defaults live in smelt.settings.notifications.turn_end.

The /inspect command comes from the opt-in smelt.plugins.inspect plugin. Add require("smelt.plugins.inspect") to init.lua to register it.

Shell Escape¶

Prefix with ! to run a shell command directly, without going through the agent. Output appears inline in the conversation. Shell escapes are useful for quick checks, such as verifying test output or reading a config value, without bloating the agent's context window with a full tool call.

!git status
!cargo test

Shell escapes also work while the agent is running.

Custom Commands¶

Create .md files in ~/.config/smelt/commands/ and they become prompt-template slash commands. Their filename is the command name, and their body is sent to the agent after template expansion. See the Customization guide for an example.

For commands implemented as Lua handlers instead of agent prompts, put a module under ~/.config/smelt/plugins/ and call smelt.cmd.register(...). Lua handlers can open UI, mutate runtime state, and invoke other commands; markdown commands are better for reusable model instructions.

Frontmatter¶

All fields are optional:

Shell Execution in Templates¶

• Inline: !`command`, output replaces the backtick expression
• Fenced: ```! code block, output replaces the block
• Escape: \!`command`, prevents execution