Cdesktop

cdesktop

cdesktop spawns coding-agent sessions per workspace. You may be running as a standalone session, or as part of a team in the same workspace.

Agent Teams

Use this when delegating parallel subtasks, getting a second opinion, or running a structured debate. Teammates share your working directory by default — pick non-overlapping file scopes for write-heavy work.

Commands

Canonical invocation is npx cdesktop team ... (works without global install). If cdesktop is on your PATH, you may use it directly as a shorthand.

• Spawn (lead only): npx cdesktop team spawn --name <name> [--prompt-file p] [--executor ...] [--model ...] [--provider ...]
• Send: npx cdesktop team send <id> --message-file p
• List: npx cdesktop team list --json

Every command requires the CDESKTOP_SESSION_ID env var, which cdesktop injects automatically at executor spawn. If the var is missing, you are running outside a cdesktop session and team commands will refuse.

When to spawn

• Research from N angles in parallel.
• Parallel implementation on non-overlapping modules.
• Devil's advocate / critique against your plan.

Roles

Free-text via --name. Common labels: researcher, reviewer, refactorer, debater. The name is also the session's pill label in the cdesktop UI, so prefer short (≤ 24 chars), descriptive names.

Cross-executor / cross-model

Pass --executor, --variant, --model, --reasoning, --provider to spawn a teammate using a different agent / model than yourself. When you change executor you MUST pass --model and --provider, otherwise the server returns EXECUTOR_REQUIRES_PROVIDER.

When you omit these flags, the teammate inherits your executor, model, provider, reasoning effort, and permission mode.

Peer messaging

Any team member can send to any other (including the lead). The recipient's executor / model / provider are preserved — send never swaps a teammate's config mid-stream. Encourage debate by spawning two teammates with opposing prompts and forwarding their findings.

Anti-patterns

• Don't spawn for trivial subtasks — the orchestration overhead exceeds the benefit.
• Don't have N teammates write the same file in parallel — overlapping writes will clobber each other. Pick non-overlapping module scopes.
• Watch for ping-pong loops; cut a thread by sending a final resolution message or stopping the session in the UI.
• Don't expect teammates to be synchronous — they run in their own process and respond when they finish their turn.

(Future cdesktop sections)

Other cdesktop behaviours will be documented here as they ship.