Agent chat

Agent chat is a side panel where you talk to a coding agent you already use (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Grok Build and others), or to a model behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint you choose (Ollama or LM Studio on your computer, OpenAI, any other URL), and have it work on the design that’s open. A coding agent runs on your computer under your own account with that agent: SolidCraft doesn’t sell or proxy a model and needs no key for it. An endpoint’s key, if it needs one, goes into your system keychain, never into SolidCraft’s settings.

Desktop app only.

Turning it on and off

Everything about it is on one page: Preferences → AI.

• Show AI features (on by default) is the master switch. Turned off, SolidCraft shows nothing of it: no AI button, no shortcut, no menu entry, no panel, and nothing is looked for or started. The page stays, so you can turn it back on.
• Show button in toolbar (on by default): the AI button at the right end of the toolbar row, which stays there however wide the window is. Turn it off to keep only the shortcut and the menu entry.

With AI features on, the panel opens from:

• the AI button at the right end of the toolbar;
• Ctrl+Shift+A (Cmd+Shift+A on a Mac), which also works from the chat’s own text box;
• View settings (the last button of the navigation bar under the view) → Agent chat.

Nothing runs until you need it: SolidCraft looks for installed agents (a quick --version each, in the background) when the panel or the AI page first opens, and starts an agent only when you send a message or press Connect.

The panel

• Docking: drag the panel’s header (the dotted grip and the title) to the other half of the window and let go. The side it would land on lights up while you drag. You can also pick Left or Right under Preferences → AI → Panel. SolidCraft remembers the side.
• Width: drag the panel’s inner edge. SolidCraft remembers it.
• Minimise (the line in the header) folds the panel into a thin strip that keeps the chat icon, the agent’s state, and a count of anything waiting for your answer. Click the icon to unfold it. Close (×) hides the panel. Neither stops the agent; Stop does.
• The agent switcher under the title picks the agent for this conversation; switching stops the one running. Next to it, when the agent has modes of its own (Claude Code has Default, Accept Edits, Plan…), a second drop-down sets the agent’s mode. When the agent reports its models (an ACP agent’s model list, or an endpoint’s /models), a model drop-down shows the one in use and changes it; SolidCraft remembers the last choice for each agent and puts it back on the next session. An endpoint’s agent also keeps it as its default model. An agent that reports no models shows no drop-down.

Typing while the agent works

The input stays enabled during a turn. Enter queues the message: it shows in the conversation as a Queued bubble that you can Edit or remove (×) until it is sent. Several queued messages go as one prompt, in order, when the turn ends normally.

• Send now (on the bubble, or Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter in the input) stops the current step, waits for the agent to say it stopped, then sends the queue as the next prompt, with a short note that the agent’s previous step was interrupted. What the interrupted message changed undoes as one step, like any other message.
• Stop (the square next to the input, or Esc in the input) stops the agent and keeps the queue: the bubbles wait for Send.
• New chat (the header button, Ctrl+Shift+L / Cmd+Shift+L with the chat focused) stops what runs, clears the conversation and the queue and starts a fresh session on the same agent, keeping the agent and its mode. It asks first when a message is running or queued. The design’s undo history is untouched.

Agents

Preferences → AI → Agents lists every agent the chat can use, each with its kind (a program or an endpoint), version or model, whether it looks signed in, Test, Default (the one a new conversation starts with), its own permission setting, and Remove for the ones you added.

Found by themselves

SolidCraft looks for agents that speak the Agent Client Protocol on your PATH and in the usual install folders a desktop app’s PATH often misses (npm’s global folder, nvm, Volta, bun, ~/.local/bin, ~/.grok/bin, Homebrew, %APPDATA%\npm). For each one it shows its version (from --version, given three seconds) and whether it looks signed in. Version checks and agent sessions also use those folders on their PATH, so adapters can find runtimes such as Node when SolidCraft is opened from Finder or the Dock. Existing absolute PATH entries keep their order; no shell startup files are run. SolidCraft only checks whether the agent’s own login file (~/.claude/.credentials.json, ~/.codex/auth.json, ~/.gemini/oauth_creds.json, …) or one of its key variables exists. It never reads the file and never starts the agent to find out. On macOS Claude Code keeps its login in the keychain, so SolidCraft doesn’t guess there.

The panel lists agents that aren’t installed with their install command and a Copy button. Refresh looks again after you install one. Test starts an agent briefly, asks it for a session and ends it again.

XAI Grok

Install Grok Build and run grok login in a terminal to sign in with your Grok account. In SolidCraft, open AI → Refresh, select XAI Grok, then Connect. You can make it the default under Preferences → AI → Agents.

SolidCraft reuses Grok Build’s sign-in in ~/.grok/auth.json; it checks only whether that file exists and does not read or copy its tokens. If sign-in is needed, the panel offers Grok’s own sign-in methods. You can also run grok login again and reconnect. Grok controls model access and usage limits for your account. This connection does not require an API key in SolidCraft. Grok Build also supports XAI_API_KEY for users who choose API authentication.

Add agent…

• Installed agent: your own entry for an installed agent, for example with other arguments.
• Custom command: any other program that speaks ACP on stdin and stdout, such as my-agent --acp. SolidCraft starts it directly, not through a shell.
• OpenAI-compatible API: a preset (Ollama http://localhost:11434/v1, LM Studio http://localhost:1234/v1, OpenAI) or a custom URL, the model name, and an optional key. The key goes into the system keychain (Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, the Secret Service on Linux) and is only ever sent over HTTPS or to this computer. Test asks the endpoint for its models. For these agents SolidCraft runs the conversation itself, with the same tools, limits and questions as for a coding agent, and at most 24 model requests per message.

Signing in

If a coding agent isn’t signed in, it says so and the panel shows Sign in to the agent with the agent’s own ways to sign in:

• A command for a terminal, e.g. claude-agent-acp --cli auth login --claudeai, with a Copy button. Run it in a terminal, sign in there, then press I’ve signed in: connect again.
• A button for agents that sign in by themselves (Codex’s ChatGPT login opens your browser).
• A variable to set for agents that take a key from the environment. The panel has no field for a coding agent’s key, on purpose.

Whatever you typed before signing in is sent once the agent is ready.

What the agent can do

The agent reaches the open design only through SolidCraft’s own tools (the MCP server), which SolidCraft hands it when the chat starts:

• Read the design: list commands, inspect features, sketches and parameters, measure, take pictures of the view.
• Change the design: run any modelling command, alone or in a batch. Changes show in the window as they happen.
• One undo per message: everything the agent changes while answering one message becomes a single undo step, named after your message. The conversation shows N changes, one undo step with Undo these changes while nothing else has happened since.
• Tool cards: each tool call shows as a card with its state; click it to see what it returned.
• Attach view: tick it to send a picture of the current view with your message, for agents that take pictures.

Permissions

Preferences → AI → Permissions decides what the agent may do without asking, for every agent; each agent can have its own setting in its row.

• Ask every time: every change to the design and every file action waits for Allow, Always allow or Deny in the panel.
• Auto-allow model edits (the default): modelling commands run at once; saving, opening, exporting, importing, starting a new design, any command given a file name, and undoing past the start of your message still ask.
• Allow everything: nothing asks. The page warns you: the agent can then save, overwrite and replace your design.

Always allow remembers that command for that agent. The page lists what you allowed this way, per agent, with Reset.

These settings cover SolidCraft’s tools. A coding agent’s own tools (its shell, its file edits) follow the agent’s own mode, which you pick in the panel’s header. When an agent asks before using one of SolidCraft’s tools, SolidCraft answers for you, since its own gate checks the call, and notes it in the chat as Auto-allowed. With Allow everything, or after Always allow, the agent’s other questions are answered the same way and noted too.

What counts as “a command given a file name”: a parameter that holds a file or folder (file, dir, output, …), or path and source when the value reads like a file name (a separator, ~, a leading dot or a known extension), or any value of those in a command that exports, imports, saves, opens or inserts. A sweep’s or pattern’s path (curve ids) and an occurrence’s path (ids) are geometry and run without a question.

What it can’t do

• Files wait for you unless you chose Allow everything. Cancel or Stop declines everything that’s waiting, and a question nobody answers is declined after four minutes. The MCP server’s folder limits still apply after you allow: the design’s folder, the recovery folder and the server’s own scratch folder.
• A limit per message. The agent may make 24 changes per message by default; you can set the number on the AI page. Reading the design doesn’t count. When it reaches the limit, it’s told to stop and report what’s left; send another message to let it carry on.
• No crash reports, whatever the permissions. Crash reports can hold other designs and file paths.
• Not the rest of the app. It can’t click the interface, change settings, quit, or drive the chat itself.
• Its own tools stay off where we can turn them off. SolidCraft declares no file system and no terminal to the agent, runs it in an empty working folder of its own, and asks the Claude Code adapter to turn off its shell, file and web tools for the session.

When the panel’s agent is stopped, another agent is picked, or SolidCraft quits, the agent and every program it started (the CLI it wraps, its MCP server) are stopped.

Privacy

Nothing goes anywhere except to the agent you run, or the endpoint you added. SolidCraft starts a coding agent as a program on your computer and talks to it over its standard input and output. What the agent sends to its own service, under your account and that service’s terms, is between you and that service, exactly as when you use the agent in a terminal. SolidCraft never sees, stores or passes on a coding agent’s password, token or key. An endpoint’s key is kept in the system keychain and sent only to that endpoint. SolidCraft’s own connection to the agent’s tools uses a random per-launch token in a file only you can read, which never passes through the agent.

Trying it without an account

A scripted test agent is in the source tree. It makes a block, rounds it and measures it, with no model behind it:

cargo build --release -p solidcraft-ui-egui --example acp_test_agent

Then add it under Preferences → AI → Add agent… → Custom command with the path of target/release/examples/acp_test_agent. Put “save” in your message to see an Allow / Deny card, or “ask” to see the agent ask its own permission.