Skip to main content
Understanding how Slate works will help you use it more effectively.

​
Core Concepts

Slate runs on agents. An Agent in slate is a combination of a model, its prompts, the available tools, and the control flow. Slate offers 3 different agents:
  • Normal: Best for most day to day tasks. Quick, reliable, and interactive. Junior engineer.
  • Smart: Uses a larger model than normal. Best for solving problems, debugging, and more confusing context.
  • Extended: Uses a reasoning model for extended use, not as intelligent as Smart, but can handle a larger variety of context.
To get the most out of slate, you’ll need to set up your environment and know how to prompt it well: -> workspace setup -> prompting guide

​
Frequently used features

​
Switching Agents

Pressing tab will switch the currently active agent and will rotate through normal, smart, and extended.

​
Switching Sessions

Use /sessions to switch between existing sessions:

Session Selection Process

  1. Type /sessions and press Enter
  2. Use ↑/↓ arrows to navigate available sessions

​
Cancellation

Esc

Cancels the current agent step, current input or closes dialogs.

Ctrl+C

Hard interrupt - Stops the cli. You will lose the session if you force kill

​
Permissions

Slate has permission modes. There are three modes to select from:
  • Default: requires explicit permission for both file editing and shell commands
  • Auto-accept: auto accepts edits, but requires permission for shell commands
  • Yolo: auto accepts all changes
Pressing shift+tab will rotate through the modes To see which mode you’re in, you can look at the bottom status bar in the cli:
Be careful when using yolo mode, especially when performing database operations.

​
Multi-line Messages

Use Ctrl+Enter or Option/Alt+Enter to insert newlines: 
> Please help me with:
  1. Parsing this JSON file    [Ctrl+Enter]
  2. Validating the schema     [Ctrl+Enter]
  3. Handling errors properly   [Enter to send]
Use Ctrl+a or Ctrl+e to jump to the beginning or end of the input context.

​
Shell Command input

Execute shell commands directly with !: 
!ls              # List files
!pwd             # Show directory
!git status      # Check git status
This will send the command output to slate directly.

​
Context Management

**Use @filename references:
> Please review @src/main.ts and suggest improvements
Add directories to expand agent’s context:
/workspace add ./src
/workspace add ./tests
/workspace list
Start fresh when switching tasks:
/workspace clear    # Clear workspace directories

​
Long Prompts

Press Ctrl+X to open your external editor for composing complex prompts:
1

Press Ctrl+X

Opens your system’s default editor
2

Write your prompt

Compose your detailed message in the editor
3

Save and close

The content automatically returns to Slate
This will not work if your permissions do not allow access to tmp or var as this command uses a temp file for your default text editor

Hotkey reference

Explore Slate’s complete set of commands.