Agents

Use specialized agents for different development tasks

Agents are the assistants you interact with directly and handle your main conversation.

Each agent has different permissions and tool access; for example, Build has all tools enabled while Plan is restricted.

Use tab or /agents to switch between agents.

Symbiotic Code comes with 4 agents, and a dedicated mode for running shell commands.

Build

The default agent with all tools enabled. Use Build for standard development work where you need full access to file operations and system commands.

Plan

A restricted agent designed for planning and analysis. We use a permission system to give you more control and prevent unintended changes. By default, all of the following are set to ask:

• file edits: All writes, patches, and edits
• bash: All bash commands

This agent is useful when you want the LLM to analyze code, suggest changes, or create plans without making any actual modifications to your codebase.

Ask

A read-only agent for getting answers and explanations without any risk of modifying your codebase.

Use Ask when you want to understand code before changing it, or when learning about patterns in your codebase.

Debug

A specialized agent for diagnosing and fixing bugs using an evidence-based methodology. Debug mode never fixes bugs based on code alone. It requires actual runtime evidence.

The debug agent follows a systematic workflow:

1. Gather context (errors, stack traces, logs)
2. Form hypotheses about the cause
3. Add instrumentation to test all hypotheses
4. Reproduce and analyze logs
5. Fix only with log proof of the root cause

Use Debug when you’re investigating unexpected behavior, tracking down errors, or need a methodical approach to complex bugs.

Shell mode

Prefix your message with ! to run it directly as a shell command without any AI processing.

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Custom agents

You can create custom agents by adding them to your ~/.config/symbiotic/agents/ folder. See custom agents for more information.