Ask

What is Ask?

Ask hands tasks to your coding agents. Choose a model, describe what you need, and get the answer back in your terminal. You can ask a question about a codebase, send a change for review, or have an agent make a fix. Another agent can use Ask to delegate work too.

It works through the coding tools you already use, including Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. Each keeps its own login and available models. Ask gives you one way to send them work and return to the results.

Start with a question

Tasks are read-only by default. Ask passes that access choice to the agent, which enforces it through its own tools. When you want a change, add --write. That lets the agent edit files and run commands, including tests and builds.

For work you want to keep separate, combine --write with --worktree. Ask creates a Git worktree and branch for the task, leaving the changes there for you to review. The worktree starts from the current commit; uncommitted edits in your checkout are not copied into it.

Give several tasks their own space

Use ask batch to run tasks in parallel. One agent could investigate a failing test while another reviews a different part of the project. Give each task a model, or use the same model for the whole batch. Separate worktrees let write tasks work without sharing a checkout.

Ask brings the answers back together in task order as JSON. You can inspect each result, follow up on one task, or resume a batch to retry only the tasks that did not finish successfully.

Come back to the conversation

Each run gets a name and a saved record. Use ask runs to find it and ask show RUN to read its answer again. Replace RUN with the name or ID printed by Ask.

With ask --continue RUN, you can ask a follow-up in the same agent conversation, where it remembers the earlier work. Continuation depends on the agent supporting saved sessions. Ask also records elapsed time, changes, and usage when reported. Token and cost reporting vary by agent; a cost limit is not a guaranteed spending cap.

Set it up

Ask is available for macOS and Linux. Install and authenticate the coding agent CLIs you want to use first. The official Ask agents also need Node.js 18 or newer. Then install Ask and connect your tools:

curl -fsSL https://fschrhunt.com/ask/install.sh | sh
ask setup
ask models

Setup finds supported tools and installs the Ask agents you select. It shows proposed defaults and app integrations before saving them. It does not install the coding CLIs or sign you in. Choose an available model as your default in ask settings, then try a question from your project directory:

ask "Where is the retry logic, and what are its limits?"

Setup can also install the Ask skill for supported apps, so their agents know how to hand off tasks. Use ask help for commands and ask docs for the documentation bundled with your installed version. The repository has the source, installation alternatives, and examples for batches and custom workflows.