Your first session

Open a terminal in your project folder and start Tatu. Sign in if you have not connected a provider yet.

cd your-project
tatu

Find your way around

Welcome card: your version, model, effort, and project folder, with hints for commands and keys. It also shows loaded instructions, skills, and hooks when present, and an earlier session when one exists.
Conversation: your messages, the model’s answers, and its tool calls and results.
Editor: the Ask anything… input where you write prompts and commands.
Footer: your folder, Git branch and changes when available, model and effort, and context use. Cost, response speed, and provider limits appear when available.

Try a small request in the editor:

Explain how this project is organized. Do not change any files.

Press Enter to send. Use Alt+Enter for a new line. Ctrl+J also inserts a new line.

Keep typing while it works

You can write and send another message while the agent is working. It appears as queued: above the editor and joins the conversation before the next model turn, rather than interrupting the current model call or tool work.

Press Esc to interrupt the active run. If suggestions or a panel are open, Esc closes those first. Queued messages dropped by an interrupted run return to the editor so you can revise or send them again.

Commands and file mentions

Type / to see command suggestions. Move through them with ↑ and ↓:

Enter runs the highlighted command or argument suggestion immediately.
Tab only completes it into the editor, so you can add arguments first.

Try /help for commands and keys, or /model to choose a model.

Type @ followed by part of a file name to find a project file. For example:

Explain @README.md

With a file suggestion highlighted, Tab or Enter inserts the path without sending the message. Then finish your prompt and press Enter to send it.

Answer the agent’s questions

The model can use ask_user to ask you a question. A form appears in place of the editor while it waits.

Use ↑ and ↓ to move and Enter to choose. For multiple choice, toggle options with Space and continue with Enter. When offered, choose the row for your own answer to type one instead.

For several questions, Tab moves between questions and the Review and send tab. Answer each question, then send from that tab. Esc dismisses the form; inside your own-answer field, it closes that field first.

Quit and come back

Type /exit or /quit to leave. You can also press Ctrl+D with an empty editor, or press Ctrl+C twice while idle with an empty editor. While work is running, Ctrl+C interrupts it first.

When you leave a saved session normally, Tatu prints:

session <id> - resume it with: tatu -resume <id>

Copy that command to return to the conversation. To resume the latest session started in the current folder, run:

tatu -continue

Interactive mode needs a terminal. Without one, tatu refuses with interactive mode needs a terminal; use -p to run a prompt. Use Scripting for pipes and one-shot prompts.