docs / 05
The crew
| Agent | Job |
|---|---|
| Chef | Turns your request into a plan of small, separate steps, and answers questions |
| Prep | Cooks the simple steps, trying lighter models first to spare your best quota |
| Cook | Cooks the standard steps |
| Senior Cook | Cooks the complex steps, and takes over any step another cook could not finish |
| Taster | Runs the check command and reviews every changed file |
| Fixer | Fixes whatever the Taster sends back |
Agents never talk to each other directly and never see chat history; plain code passes the work between them, and every step has a fixed limit on how many model calls it may make. That keeps runs predictable and cheap.
Switching agents off
You do not always need the whole crew. Open crew in the taskbar and press on beside an agent to switch it off, or open the agent and press Switch off. Press it again to switch it back on. The crew badge then shows how many are on (for example 4/6), and a switched-off cook stands faded in the kitchen. Your choice is kept when Kadhai restarts.
- A cook that is off (Prep, Cook, Senior Cook or Fixer) gets no work: its steps go to the nearest cook that is on, moving up the line first (Prep, Cook, Senior Cook, Fixer). At least one cook always stays on.
- The Taster off means no review: runs make fewer model calls and finish sooner. The plan's check command still runs, because it costs no model call, and the run report says the review was skipped.
- A specialist that is off is not offered to the Chef, so it gets no steps until you switch it on.
- The Chef plans every run, so it cannot be switched off.
Hiring your own agents
Open crew in the taskbar and click + hire a specialist. A specialist is an extra cook with your own instructions. You give it:
- a name (it gets its own drawn figure and colour),
- one line saying what it is good at. The Chef reads only this line to decide when to give it a step, so be specific (CSS layout and visual polish for phones, not frontend expert),
- optional instructions on how it should work (Always use CSS variables. Mobile first.),
- a colour, a model and skills, as for any agent.
Not sure what to write? Type a few words into Generate with AI at the top of the form (someone who writes tests for my Node code) and press Generate. The Chef fills in the name, the good at line and the instructions, and ticks the skills that fit. Nothing is hired until you read it and press Hire.
Up to eight specialists can be hired. If one cannot finish a step, the Senior Cook takes it over.
Tuning any agent
Open an agent and click Edit agent. For house agents the name and job stay fixed; for every agent you can set:
- Colour. A slider through the hues; Reset goes back to its usual one.
- Model. Its usual order, best available first, lighter models first, or start with one particular model. That model is tried first on every call; if it is rate-limited or off, the normal order takes over, so the agent never gets stuck.
- Skills. Short packs of working advice from the skills library (clean code, testing, accessible HTML, security and more). An agent can load up to five; each one is added to every prompt it sends, so on free keys load only what it really needs.
- Connections (cooks only). Which connected services this agent may use. The default is all of them, including ones you add later.
Skills
The skills library has fourteen built-in skills. To write your own, click + new skill beside the skills list in any agent's edit dialog: a name, one line saying what it is for, and the advice, most important first. To borrow one, pick from the hand-checked gallery or paste a link to a SKILL.md (on GitHub, for example) in Start from a link; long ones are condensed by the Chef. Your own skills are saved in skills.local/.
This page comes from the user guide in the repository. Something unclear or wrong? Tell us.