Chapter 09 · agents
Agents: your tools, your rules
Roono has no built-in AI and nothing to sell you. If you already use a supported agent, it can work on your project — inside a real terminal, on your own account, seeing only what you approve, and never, ever writing your draft.
⌘JThe fifth mode
Agent is a full workspace mode beside Write, Canvas, Timeline, and Studio. Press⌘J to jump to it, and ⌘J again to land back in the writing mode you came from. Agent never sits as a permanent drawer inside Write — when you are writing, you are writing.
Real terminals, not imitationsHow agents run
A supported agent in roono runs as its official, unmodified interactive command-line app, inside a genuine terminal session scoped to the project. You talk to it exactly as you would in Terminal.app — same prompts, same keys, same behavior.
The provider owns everything that is theirs: authentication, your subscription entitlement, model availability, upgrades, and the conversation itself. Roono never stores provider tokens, never picks a model for you, never fabricates a session, and adds no fake prompt box or “run” button on top. If the agent is not installed or not working, roono says so — it does not quietly substitute something else.
You hold the guest listScoped context through roono MCP
What the agent can read is your decision. Roono exposes selected project operations through a structured boundary (roono MCP), and a session starts with an explicit context approval: this draft, this evidence folder — read-only. Authoritative storage and materialized sources are never writable. The Vault is not hidden from the agent; it is absent from its workspace entirely.
A session in facsimile. The conversation belongs to the provider's CLI; the structured result comes back as a proposal.
Agents propose; writers decideProposals, always
There is exactly one way an agent's work reaches your manuscript: as aproposal on an agent/…branch, with a gold ◆ moment on the Timeline. Accept (⏎) applies it — draft, linked pins, gate, and Timeline all update together. Reject (⌫) archives the branch. You can also split a proposal and take only the parts that work. Try this one.
The ferry left before dawn, and it is worth noting that the harbor master would not say who was on it, which is something that matters.
The ferry left before dawn, and it is worth noting that the harbor master would not say who was on it, which is something that matters.the harbor master would not say who was aboard.
Accept and the draft above updates in place; reject and it stands. Either way, the run and your decision are logged.
Non-negotiableThe rules
- Agents never write to the draft directly. Ever. The proposal branch is the only door, and you hold it.
- The Vault is absent from every agent workspace — structurally, not by filtering.
- Every run is logged: agent, prompt, files read, diff, and usage — on your device, for your review.
- No silent billing switch. A failed local CLI is never quietly replaced by a separately billed API run. API keys are an explicit option you configure yourself, with billing that belongs to the provider.
Agents & AISetup in Settings
The Agents & AI pane lists the supported CLIs roono detects on your Mac, with version and a tested-state pill for each, plus official install and help actions when one is missing. Open terminal starts a session; signing in happens inside the provider's own terminal, on your account — roono never sees the credentials.
The agent account, the model, and any API billing belong to the provider you choose. Roono supplies the terminal, the scoped context, and the proposal gate — never the thinking, and never a meter.