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crewship ask

ask is the low-friction prompt — type a question, get an answer, no agent slug to remember. The agent resolves from --agent, then the saved default-agent config key, then (in a TTY) an interactive picker. Designed for shell pipelines like git diff | crewship ask "review this". Defined in cmd/crewship/cmd_ask.go. 
crewship ask [prompt] [flags]
A new chat is created per invocation (origin tagged CLI, so the web UI sidebar shows a violet CLI chip). To send follow-ups to an existing chat, use crewship run --chat <chat-id> instead. Auth: requires crewship login plus a workspace context. Both checks are skipped in offline modes (--dry-run, --estimate).

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Flags

FlagDefaultEffect
--agent <slug-or-id>(config)Override the saved default-agent. Resolved via /api/v1/agents.
--agents <csv>(unset)Fan out the prompt across multiple agents in parallel. Overrides --agent.
-p, --prompt <text>(unset)Prompt text, @path to read a file, or @- to read from stdin.
-q, --quietfalseOnly print the agent’s text — no [agent: …] / [done] banners on stderr.
--no-streamfalseWait for done, print only the final text.
--timeout <secs>0HTTP timeout in seconds; 0 = no timeout.
--with-git-difffalseAppend git diff as context.
--with-git-stagedfalseAppend git diff --staged as context.
--with-git-logfalseAppend the last 20 commits.
--with-git-statusfalseAppend git status -s.
--with-file <path>(unset)Append a file’s contents. Repeatable.
--with-cmd <shell>(unset)Append the stdout of a shell command. Repeatable.
--pastefalseAppend the system clipboard (pbpaste / wl-paste / xclip / xsel).
--dry-runfalsePrint the assembled prompt and exit. No auth, no agent, no run.
--estimatefalsePrint token-count + cost estimate and exit. No run.
--markdownfalseForce markdown ANSI styling.
--no-markdownfalseDisable markdown ANSI styling.
--save <path>(unset)Tee the agent’s text response (no ANSI) to path, written atomically.
--planfalsePlan mode — produce a step-by-step plan without executing tools.
--effort <level>(unset)Reasoning effort: `minimallowmediumhighxhigh`.
--show-thinkingfalsePrint reasoning blocks to stdout (un-truncated).
--dry-run and --estimate are mutually exclusive with the chat-creation path: nothing hits the server.

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Examples

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Smallest case

crewship ask "what time is it on the staging box?"
If default-agent isn’t set and stdin is a TTY, the CLI opens a picker. After choosing once, it offers to save the pick as the default so subsequent ask calls are zero-config.

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Pipe stdin as the prompt

git diff | crewship ask "review this change"
cat issue.md | crewship ask "summarize"
When stdin is a pipe and a positional prompt is also given, the positional becomes the instruction and stdin becomes the context.

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Compose context flags

crewship ask "explain this failure" \
  --with-cmd "make test" \
  --with-git-status \
  --with-file CHANGELOG.md
Every --with-* flag is appended as a fenced markdown block; the assistant sees them in order.

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Fan out to multiple agents

crewship ask "rate this PR description" --agents code-review,docs-lead,design-review
Runs all three agents in parallel against the same prompt. Each agent’s stream is interleaved with a coloured prefix so you can scan who said what.

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Dry-run the assembled prompt

crewship ask "fix the failing test" \
  --with-cmd "go test ./..." \
  --dry-run
Useful for double-checking which context blocks survived deduplication before paying for inference.

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Estimate cost without running

crewship ask --prompt @big-spec.md --estimate
Prints input-token count and a rough cost figure based on the workspace’s pricing config.

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Save the response for later

crewship ask "summarize this week's runs" \
  --with-cmd "crewship run list" \
  --save weekly.md
--save writes the unstyled markdown via an atomic tempfile — a crashed run leaves the previous file intact rather than truncating it.

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Read the prompt from stdin

crewship ask --prompt @-
# (type or paste, EOF with Ctrl-D)

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Configuration

Set the default agent once: 
crewship config set default-agent daniel
Saved to ~/.crewship/cli-config.yaml. Unset by passing an empty string or deleting the key.

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Common errors

  • no default agent set. Use --agent <slug>, --agents <list>, or run 'crewship config set default-agent <slug>' — non-TTY mode (CI, piped stdin) and no agent specified.
  • prompt is required (positional, --prompt, stdin pipe, or --with-* flag) — the assembled prompt was empty.
  • no agents available in this workspace — the picker fired but GET /api/v1/agents came back empty.

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See also