Agents, modes and swarm

Cosine operates in one of four modes that control how the AI agent behaves. The active mode is always visible in the footer bar at the bottom of the terminal user interface (TUI).

Modes

Mode	Icon	Colour	Behaviour
Manual	◆	Gray	Asks for confirmation before mutating actions
Auto	●	Green	Executes all actions without confirmation
Plan	○	Purple	Read-only planning — no file modifications
Swarm	◈	Blue	Multi-agent orchestration with subagents

Manual

The default mode. The agent can read files, search, and run analysis freely, but asks for your explicit approval before any action that modifies your project.

Auto

Executes all tool calls — including code edits, terminal commands, and file operations — without asking for confirmation. Useful when you trust the agent’s judgment and want it to work through a task end-to-end without interruption.

Plan

Puts the agent into a read-only state. It can explore your codebase and ask questions, but cannot create, modify, or delete any files. Instead, it produces a structured implementation plan saved to disk. When the plan is ready, you choose how to proceed: approve and switch to Auto or Manual, hand it to Swarm, or provide feedback for revision.

Swarm

Enables multi-agent orchestration. The primary agent acts as an orchestrator that can delegate work to subagents running in parallel, each working on a portion of the task. Subagents can share the current workspace or run in background worktrees.

Subagents

A subagent is an additional agent spawned to help with part of a task. Subagents:

Have access to the full set of tools
Can run synchronously or in parallel
Report progress in the Agents panel
Can be reviewed and managed independently

Switching modes

In the CLI and Desktop:

Press Shift+Tab to cycle through modes
Press / or Ctrl+P and select Change Mode
Start with a flag: cos start --mode auto

The last mode you select is automatically saved and restored on the next session start.

Flags for modes

cos start --mode auto       # or --am
cos start --mode manual     # or --mm
cos start --mode plan       # or --pm
cos start --mode swarm      # or --sm

Modes — Detailed behaviour and when to use each mode
Swarm Mode — How multi-agent orchestration works
CLI Navigation — Keyboard shortcuts and TUI layout