Warp Agent CLI > Using the agent

Agent conversations in the Warp Agent CLI

How agent conversations work in the Warp Agent CLI: streaming responses, tool calls, diffs, task lists, plans, plus managing and resuming conversations.

When you send the agent a prompt in the Warp Agent CLI, the conversation appears in a scrollable transcript directly in your terminal. Responses stream in as they’re generated, and everything the agent does along the way renders inline: tool calls, file diffs, questions, task lists, and plans. You can follow and steer the work without leaving your session. Conversations persist as you work: you can start new ones, browse history, compact context, and resume after exiting.

The conversation transcript

Your prompt appears on a highlighted row marked with >, followed by the agent’s streaming response. While the agent is working, a progress indicator with elapsed time appears above the input; press Ctrl+C once to stop the current response.

Responses render as formatted Markdown, including syntax-highlighted code blocks and tables. A few terminal-specific caveats: Mermaid diagrams appear as their source in a code block, images show their alt text instead of rendering inline, and very long code blocks are truncated to keep the transcript responsive.

Tool calls

Every tool call the agent makes appears inline in the transcript, in the order it happens. Most render as a one-line status row with a state glyph and a label, such as reading a file or searching your codebase.

Some tool calls render richer, interactive content instead:

Shell commands - Run in your session and stream their output into the transcript.
File edits - Expandable diffs with per-file headers.
Questions - Interactive option prompts.
Plans - Inline plan documents.

When a tool call needs your approval before it runs, an approval card appears in place of the input. See permissions in the CLI for how approvals work.

Code diffs

When the agent edits files, the edit renders as a diff in the transcript:

Per-file sections - Each edited file gets a header row showing the action (Updated, Created, or Deleted), the file name, and added/removed line counts.
Multi-file edits - Group under one summary header (for example, Edited 3 files) with each file’s section nested beneath it.

Diffs open fully expanded while the agent waits for your approval, and collapse to their headers once the edits are applied. Press e while the approval card is active to expand or collapse all diffs at once.

Thinking blocks

For models that expose their reasoning, the agent’s thinking streams into a collapsible section headed Thinking..., which collapses to a single Thought for row once it finishes.

Agent questions

When the agent needs a decision from you mid-task, it asks a question with an interactive option list that temporarily replaces the input. Besides the arrow keys, you can press an option’s number to choose it, and Other… accepts a free-form answer when the listed options don’t fit.

Options the agent suggests as the best fit are labeled (recommended). Multi-select questions mark each chosen option with a check mark so you can pick several. When the agent asks several questions at once, the card advances through them; after the last answer, the agent continues and focus returns to the input.

Task lists

For multi-step work, the agent tracks its progress with a task list rendered directly in the transcript under a bold ≡ Tasks header. Each task row starts with a status glyph:

◌ - Pending
● - In progress
✓ - Completed

Canceled tasks appear struck through. As the agent finishes tasks, compact confirmation rows such as ✓ Completed <task> (2/5) mark progress without repeating the whole list.

Task lists in the CLI reflect the same agent behavior as in the Warp app. Learn more about how task lists work.

Planning

Use the /plan slash command, followed by a description of your task, to have the agent research first and produce a plan before making changes. You can also ask for a plan in natural language.

The plan renders inline in the transcript as a formatted document with its own header row showing the plan’s status, and an Updated plan entry appears when the agent revises it. Toggle the latest plan with Ctrl+Shift+P; while a plan is open, a hint below it shows the exact shortcut.

Planning in the CLI follows the same workflow as the Warp app. See Planning for how plans are created, reviewed, and executed.

Selecting and copying output

Select text anywhere in the transcript by dragging with the mouse. Releasing the mouse button copies the selection to your clipboard automatically; the footer confirms with copied to clipboard.

To copy an entire conversation as Markdown, use the /export-to-clipboard slash command, or use /export-to-file to save it to a file.

Managing conversations

The CLI saves every agent conversation as you work, so closing your terminal never loses your progress. You can start fresh conversations, reopen past ones from a searchable history, compact long conversations to free up context, and resume a conversation after exiting.

Conversation persistence

Conversations are saved to your Warp account automatically; there is no separate save step. Reopening a past conversation restores the full transcript, including agent responses, tool calls, and file-edit diffs.

The CLI shows one conversation at a time: opening a past conversation replaces the current transcript, and the previous one remains available in history. You can’t switch conversations while the current conversation is responding or a command is running; finish or stop it with Ctrl+C first.

Starting a new conversation

Use any of these slash commands to clear the transcript and start a fresh conversation:

/new - Starts a new conversation.
/agent - Same as /new.
/clear - Same as /new.

Each command accepts an optional prompt. For example, /new write tests for the parser starts a new conversation and immediately sends that prompt to the agent. To keep the history but reduce its size instead, use /compact.

Conversation history

To browse and reopen past conversations, open the conversation menu in either of two ways:

/conversations - Run the slash command from the input.
← - Press the left arrow key when the input is empty and the cursor is at the start. The empty input shows a ← for conversations hint as a reminder.

The menu lists your Warp Agent conversations, including conversations started in the Warp app and completed cloud agent runs tied to your account. Opening one restores its transcript, and new prompts you send continue that conversation.

To continue a cloud agent run from the CLI, or to hand the current conversation off to a cloud agent, see cloud handoff and orchestration.

Compacting context

Long conversations eventually fill the model’s context window, which can degrade response quality. The /compact command frees up context by asking the agent to summarize the conversation history so far and carry only the summary forward.

/compact - Summarizes the conversation history with default instructions.
/compact <instructions> - Adds custom summarization instructions. For example, /compact keep the API design decisions tells the agent what to preserve in the summary.

After compaction, a collapsed Conversation summary block appears in the transcript, and the conversation keeps working normally with the summary standing in for the compacted history.

Resuming conversations

When you exit the CLI with a non-empty conversation, it prints a command for picking that conversation back up:

To continue this conversation, run:
warp --resume YOUR_CONVERSATION_TOKEN

Run the printed command to reopen the conversation in a new session; YOUR_CONVERSATION_TOKEN is a conversation identifier generated by Warp, and the same conversation also remains available from the /conversations menu.

The --resume flag loads the conversation at startup and restores the full transcript, so you can continue prompting where you left off. For the complete list of command-line flags, see the CLI reference.

Permissions and profiles - Approve, reject, or auto-approve the agent’s tool calls.
Running shell commands - How commands the agent (or you) run appear in the transcript.
Cloud handoff and orchestration - Hand off conversations to cloud agents and resume cloud runs.
Warp Agent CLI reference - Command-line flags, slash commands, and keyboard shortcuts.
Planning - The full planning workflow.
Task lists - How agents create and update task lists.