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Interactive Terminal

cosh starts in Enhanced Assisted mode and keeps the shell's native prompt appearance. Cosh may route natural-language input before bash or zsh executes it. Press Shift+Tab at an empty prompt for Enhanced Shell-only, or select Native at startup when the session must have no Cosh hooks, observation, or insights.

Status symbols are off by default. Set shell.status_symbols = true in config.toml (or COSH_SHELL_STATUS_SYMBOLS=1 for one session) to publish a ◇ (Assisted) or ◌ (Shell-only) status line when a prompt opens, control returns from a card, or routing changes. It scrolls with terminal output. Shell prompts start on the next line, keeping normal wrapping and cursor movement; editing redraws do not add status lines. Native sessions have no Cosh status line.

A typical workflow​

  1. Change to the target directory and run cosh.
  2. Run familiar commands normally.
  3. Press Shift+Tab when ordinary input should remain Shell-only.
  4. Describe a task in Assisted mode and review cards before side effects.
  5. Use /session status before leaving a long-running investigation.

Useful starts:

cosh
cosh --shell zsh
cosh --resume
COSH_SHELL_INTEGRATION=native cosh

How input is routed​

InputNativeEnhanced Shell-only (◌ if enabled)Enhanced Assisted (◇ if enabled)
git statusRuns in the Shell.Runs in the Shell; an execution insight may follow.Runs in the Shell; an execution insight may follow.
helloThe Shell normally reports a missing command.The Shell normally reports a missing command.The classifier evaluates it and currently leaves this ambiguous single word to the Shell.
why did the last command fail?The Shell handles the text.The Shell handles the text.Starts an Agent request with recent terminal evidence.
/session listThe Shell handles the text.The Shell handles the text.Runs a Cosh control command.
Agent tool requestUnavailable.Available after explicitly accepting an insight or Agent entry.Runs or shows an approval card according to the approval mode.

Native integration does not install Cosh DEBUG, RETURN, or ERR traps and does not enable extdebug, functrace, or errtrace. Enhanced is the default; select Native with shell.integration = "native" or COSH_SHELL_INTEGRATION=native. Restart cosh to switch integrations. Shift+Tab changes only the Enhanced routing substate, without restarting.

Approved Shell commands in enhanced integration stay in the foreground Shell, so prompts, output, job control, and Ctrl+C remain usable. See Tool approval for the safety rules.

Bash prompt compatibility​

Enhanced combines user PROMPT_COMMAND hooks with Cosh's prompt hooks. User hooks configured before integration keep their execution order under the selected Bash version. Both Assisted and Shell-only use this integration.

The variable's representation and child environment have these limits:

  • Bash 5.1 and newer use an array. An existing export attribute is retained, but Bash does not export array values. A previously exported scalar PROMPT_COMMAND therefore no longer reaches child processes, including when its original value was an empty string.
  • Bash 4.3–5.0 use a combined scalar without the export attribute. This keeps Cosh's internal hook text out of child processes; the original user scalar is not exported either.

Configure prompt hooks in each interactive shell's startup files when child shells should initialize them independently. Choose Native at startup when the session must preserve Bash's own prompt-variable representation and environment behavior. Native provides no Cosh hooks, observation, or insights; switching Enhanced to Shell-only does not remove the limits above.

--resume always selects Enhanced, even with COSH_SHELL_INTEGRATION=native or shell.integration = "native". Omit --resume when Native behavior is required.

These limits apply to Bash PROMPT_COMMAND, not ordinary environment variables or the interactive continuation prompt PS2.

Sessions and proactive help​

  • Enhanced sessions are persisted by cosh-core and scoped to the workspace where cosh started. Recovery restores model-visible conversation context, not terminal processes or old terminal output. See Session recovery.
  • smart is the default analysis mode inside enhanced integration. Use AI analysis to choose how much proactive failure help appears.
  • /help is the source of truth for enhanced-mode commands; use Interactive commands for a concise reference.

Next steps​