Surfaces

The same daemon serves three surfaces, backed by the same agents and sessions. You can start a conversation in one and finish it in another; async jobs spawned in either show up in both.

TUI — otters chat

Terminal-first. Full streaming, keyboard-driven, with slash commands:

• /quit, /clear, /help, /session
• /jobs [status] — async jobs in this chat session
• /job <id> — full state + tail of stdout/stderr
• /cancel <id> — cancel a running job

A bottom-bar strip shows running jobs scoped to the session (updated every 2 s). In-flight tool calls grow a live log preview when the model is mid-job_watch / job_wait / job_status so you can see what the model is seeing.

otters prompt <name> "..." is the one-shot variant for scripts and pipelines — same agent, streams the reply to stdout, exits.

Dashboard — browser UI

The daemon ships a browser dashboard on the HTTP port. otters info prints the URL (default http://127.0.0.1:5500). The dashboard surfaces:

• Image catalog — every agent image in the local store, with a run-from-image dialog that lets you override MODEL and every ENV without an Agentfile edit. Per-version Run button on the image-detail page does the same per tag.
• Async jobs — /jobs/<id> streams live stdout / stderr. The chat view inlines a log preview under each running async tool call.
• Chat — same conversation model as the TUI. Sessions are shared.

Agents that need configuration at start-up (auth tokens, base URLs) are easiest to launch from the dashboard: pick the image card, hit Run, fill the ENV overrides in the dialog.

Programmatic — Connect/gRPC API

Each surface above is a thin client over the daemon's Connect/gRPC API. For embedding agents in another Go program, two entry points:

• pkg/agent — the runtime SDK. Wraps the daemon RPCs in a typed Go API. Stream tokens, observe tool calls, inject context.
• Direct Connect/gRPC — when you're not in Go, or when the SDK's shape doesn't fit. Schema lives in openotters/openotters/api.

Per-agent authentication is a JWT minted by the daemon at agent-create time. See agent-scoped JWTs for the auth model.

Sessions are shared

Every conversation has a stable session id. otters chat mints cli:chat:<uuid>; the dashboard's New session button mints gui:chat:<uuid>. Both end up labelled the same way on every async job they spawn, so otters jobs ls filters cleanly across both surfaces.