Muhammad Zakir Ramadhan
2fa6ee247b
Tools, six built-in to fourteen: - read_many_files: up to 20 paths read concurrently, each with its own window. An unreadable path is reported in its own block instead of throwing. - multi_edit: several edits to one file, validated in memory first so a late failure cannot leave the file half-written. - list_dir: ignore-aware depth-limited tree. - git_status/diff/log/show/blame: read-only, spawned with a fixed argv rather than a shell string, which is what makes them safe to auto-approve. toolSets gates them. core is always on; edit-plus and git are optional. A disabled set reaches neither the wire nor the system prompt, since a prompt naming an absent tool teaches calls that cannot succeed. Interface: - Reasoning streams to a collapsed panel, ctrl-r expands, dropped when the turn ends: it is progress, not the answer. - The tool in flight is named from tool-input-start, before its arguments finish streaming, and cleared on its result. - Prompts typed mid-turn queue and drain in order. esc clears the queue as well as aborting. - @ opens a path picker fed by the ignore-aware walker. Prefix matches rank above substring matches, so @src/ means "under src/". The walk runs on the first @, not at startup. ctrl-c kills the command in flight and keeps the turn. The call throws rather than returning, so the model cannot read a killed command as one that ran and failed on its own terms. The kill takes the whole process tree: killing cmd /c alone left the real command holding both pipes open, so the read never returned and the interrupt did nothing for 19 seconds. Two pruning fixes: - A tool result whose tool call was pruned is now dropped with it. Pruning counts messages, so the cut landed between an assistant tool-call and the tool message answering it, producing 400 "No tool call found for function call output with call_id ...". The reverse pairing is left alone: a call awaiting its result is what a suspended approval looks like. - ignore.ts called statFs without importing it, so walk() crashed on the first symlink. 482 tests, up from 404. Docs synced across README, ROADMAP, TODO, and all of docs/: tool sets, the new tools, ctrl-c semantics, the tool-start event, and the two hand-maintained tool-name lists recorded as a known weakness.
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Agents and thinking
An agent variant sets three things: how much the model deliberates, which tools it is offered, and a behaviour appendix in the system prompt.
shiro --agent deep # at launch
shiro --agent plan --think low # variant with an overridden level
/agent picker
/agent review direct
/think picker
/think max direct
The variants
| Variant | Thinking | Tools | Steps | For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
default |
medium | all | 50 | ordinary work |
quick |
off | all | 12 | small, well-scoped edits |
deep |
max | all | 80 | hard problems, unclear causes |
plan |
high | read-only | 50 | investigate and propose |
review |
high | read-only | 50 | critique a change |
quick tells the model not to deliberate, not to write a task list, and not to explore
beyond what the change needs. Good for a rename or a one-line fix where thinking budget is
pure latency.
deep asks for more than one hypothesis before acting, more reading before concluding,
and findings recorded with remember so they survive compaction.
plan and review are genuinely read-only. write_file, edit_file, multi_edit,
and bash are withheld from the model, not merely discouraged in prose — a model that cannot
see a tool cannot call it. They keep everything that only reads, including read_many_files,
list_dir, and the git tools. Their prompts also forbid describing edits as if they had been
made.
Variants and tool sets
Two separate things narrow the tool list, and they compose.
A variant withholds tools by capability: plan cannot write, whatever the config says.
toolSets withholds them by cost: a project that never wants the git tools switches that set
off for every variant. See tools.
Both go through one function, so a withheld tool is missing from the wire and from the system
prompt together. /tools lists what is actually offered this turn, with the set each tool came
from.
Thinking levels
off, low, medium, high, max. They map to whatever the provider actually supports:
| Level | OpenAI reasoning_effort |
Anthropic thinking |
|---|---|---|
off |
none |
{ type: "disabled" } |
low |
low |
budget_tokens: 6400 |
medium |
medium |
proportional budget |
high |
high |
budget_tokens: 38400 |
max |
xhigh |
maximum budget |
Verified against both wire formats rather than assumed.
Higher costs more and takes longer. off on a hard problem produces confident wrong
answers; max on a rename wastes a few cents and several seconds. The variants pick
sensible defaults, so reach for /think only when a specific turn needs something else.
Overriding
--agent deep --think low gives you deep's tools, steps, and appendix with a low thinking
budget. The override clones the preset rather than mutating it, so a later /agent deep in
the same session still gets max.
Defaults in config
{ "agent": "deep", "thinking": "high" }
A flag beats the config file. An unknown name fails at startup with the valid list rather than silently falling back:
$ shiro --agent turbo
shiro: Unknown agent "turbo". Available: default, quick, deep, plan, review
What the variant changes in the prompt
The system prompt describes only the tools actually offered, and the workflow rules adapt.
Under plan the model is told it has no tools that change anything and that it cannot run
commands, so it should say what to run rather than claim it passed. Under default it is
told which tools need approval and to verify with the project's tests.
A prompt that describes a withheld tool teaches the model to attempt calls that cannot succeed, which is why the description is generated from the live tool set.