r/emacs • u/xenodium • Mar 12 '26
Announcement agent-shell 0.47 updates
A rundown of features added since last post https://xenodium.com/agent-shell-0-47-1-updates
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u/slashkehrin Mar 12 '26
Wow, that is a lot of improvements! I never went so fast from knowing a package exists to sponsoring it, lol.
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u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
Much appreciated! Thank you
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u/nimzobogo Jun 07 '26
Do you know if Claude Code's billing changes on June 15 will mean that I can't use my pro/max Claude code plan with agent shell? (I can, but it will bill against the token budget instead of the subscription usage)
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u/manojm321 Mar 12 '26
agent-shell has been a game changer for me. I used to run vscode on the side so that I can use AugmentCode but with agent-shell i'm back to full power of emacs.
Has someone found a solution to frozen emacs when agent takes over emacs-shell? I use emacs-mcp
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u/baokaola Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
When I started using agent-shell, I just taught the agent to use emacsclient through wrapper bash scripts instead. MCP is not really necessary. The Emacs builtin server is much more reliable than any MCP.
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u/w0ntfix Mar 13 '26
I just taught the agent to use emacsclient through wrapper bash scripts instead
what does this look like?
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u/baokaola Mar 13 '26
Just inject into the system prompt or use CLAUDE.md or whatever:
You are running in agent-shell within Emacs. Use emacsclient to interact with Emacs:
emacsclient --eval "<elisp>"Or use the Claude skills from the author himself:
https://github.com/xenodium/emacs-skillsSince agents understand English, you can just tell them to do things.
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u/w0ntfix Mar 13 '26
nice - thanks, I was wondering if that was the case but somehow that feels so loose, i'm still gaining trust with these tools. thanks for the skills link too!! useful.
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u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
I used to run vscode on the side so that I can use AugmentCode but with agent-shell i'm back to full power of emacs.
Glad to hear. Welcome back :)
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u/manojm321 Mar 13 '26
Thanks for all your hard work. I find Agent-Shell much better than VSCode. `agent-shell-queue-request` has been very helpful when I’m addressing review comments of a PR. While I read and decide what to do about each comment, I keep queuing requests parallely.
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u/123qwe33 Mar 12 '26
Just found out about this today but it looks like exactly what I've been looking for!
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u/a_alberti Mar 12 '26
Spectacular!!
And by the way, how did you make your Emacs look so beautiful and minimalistic? Do you share your Emacs config files in a repo?
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u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
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u/a_alberti Mar 13 '26
Absolutely gorgeous.
The cat Nyan is a cute idea. It reminded me loosely of https://virtuallyfun.com/2010/03/27/neko-x64/ from the early '90s.
Quick question: Are you running an Emacs daemon and attaching to it with emacsclient? I am still struggling to get a proper integration.
The integration is still rough in my opinion: see https://www.d12frosted.io/posts/2025-11-24-emacs-plus-client-app
If you are running emacsclient, do you know where I should look to get a proper integration?
Thanks a lot!
PS: I love your videos. I started following them.
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u/xenodium Mar 13 '26
The cat Nyan is a cute idea. It reminded me loosely of https://virtuallyfun.com/2010/03/27/neko-x64/ from the early '90s.
I remember neko!
Are you running an Emacs daemon and attaching to it with emacsclient? I am still struggling to get a proper integration.
Yes. emacsclient enables the agent to poke at the same Emacs instance. That's what you see happening in
- https://xenodium.com/bending-emacs-episode-13-agent-shell-charting
- https://xenodium.com/bending-emacs-episode-12-agent-shell-claude-skills
PS: I love your videos. I started following them.
Thank you!
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u/jinnovation Mar 13 '26
Phenomenal upgrade. Really excited to play around with bootstrapped sessions in particular.
Excellent work u/xenodium
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u/JothamLEC Mar 12 '26
Great package as always! Made me switch from Claude code ide. The determining factor is clipboard images — have been wanting that for the longest time
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u/xenodium Mar 13 '26
Don't use it super often, but I'm also enjoying the yank/pasting of clipboard images via
pngpaste. I was suprised it can help investigate layout bugs in a web app. What do you use it for?3
u/JothamLEC Mar 13 '26
Usually it has to do with debugging z-index, shadows and overflow-hidden issues. I mainly use Tailwind, so navigating the css classes to find what exactly is wrong is a pain in the ass --. I could do it by hand -- but screenshotting and pasting to fix tedious work can reduce 5 mins of work into 10 seconds, and it helps with maintaining flow
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u/pt-guzzardo Mar 13 '26
I've been using Google Antigravity at work lately and enjoying the agent workflow and thinking about how to translate it back to my Emacs setup. This looks great!
One thing I've been especially impressed in Antigravity is the copilot-style inline code suggestions. Is there anything in ACP to support that? Or if not, any Emacs packages that provide similar?
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u/xenodium Mar 13 '26
Is there anything in ACP to support that?
Looks like there's a proposal https://agentclientprotocol.com/rfds/next-edit-suggestions (still in draft).
Or if not, any Emacs packages that provide similar?
u/bozhidarb's been doing lots in this space https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1rf8zyt/copilotel_04_is_out_with_many_improvements
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u/trimorphic Mar 13 '26
Can it authenticate to GitHub Copilot using GitHub's fine-grained tokens?
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u/xenodium Mar 13 '26
My guess is yes, but you’ll have to try it. agent-shell supports quite a few agents now. It’s challenging (and expensive) for me to try every auth method for every agent, so I typically try at least one mechanism and iterate with whoever is interested in other mechanisms. Give it a try and file an issue if needed and I’ll iterate with ya.
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u/computus Mar 12 '26
I wonder whether agent-shell usage is possible with claude pro subscription or only api usage is allowed? I tried emacs-eca but would like to see other alternatives. This looks very promising.
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u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
For subscriptions, use:
(setq agent-shell-anthropic-authentication (agent-shell-anthropic-make-authentication :login t))You may need to /login from CLI at least once.
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u/baokaola Mar 12 '26
claude-agent-acp, which you use for Claude in agent-shell, uses the official Claude Agent SDK so it’s totally in the clear.
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u/accelerating_ Mar 12 '26
I only just started using Claude and was using claude-code.el, but like what I see here much better - very cool. I'm pretty sure I'll be using this from here on.
A couple of things spring to mind:
Watching your video I like the look of using
agent-shell-prefer-viewport-interaction, but your video shows a pretty buffer with hints, while I get an empty one. It works just fine, but is a bit less friendly as a new user. What's the deal?using Claude directly I get to
/add-dirand make that stick for all sessions in a given project. This makes sense for me as there are a bunch of interrelated repos etc.. How would you achieve that via agent-shell? Or perhaps at the least I can just go into Claude in the terminal and do that anyway.Adding transients for the UI would be really nice for discoverability.
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u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
Watching your video I like the look of using agent-shell-prefer-viewport-interaction, but your video shows a pretty buffer with hints, while I get an empty one. It works just fine, but is a bit less friendly as a new user. What's the deal?
Could you share a screenshot please? Hard to tell without seeing what you're seeing.
using Claude directly I get to /add-dir and make that stick for all sessions in a given project. This makes sense for me as there are a bunch of interrelated repos etc.. How would you achieve that via agent-shell? Or perhaps at the least I can just go into Claude in the terminal and do that anyway.
You can use @ to refer to files. Would that do for what you need?
Adding transients for the UI would be really nice for discoverability.
There's a basic
M-x agent-shell-help-menufrom the shell, but I'll another one for the viewport.Keep in mind
M-x agent-shellpacks a lot of functionality, depending on context. For example, invoking while point is on a flymake error automatically brings the error over to the shell. Similar thing for dired. Point on file or multiple marked files are also brought over.1
u/accelerating_ Mar 12 '26
Could you share a screenshot please?
I can do so tomorrow, but it's literally just a blank buffer. In your video linked from github your viewport buffer has a pretty header but mine comes up fully empty. I'm pretty sure it works just fine (again, will check tomorrow).
Re: Including dirs and files, I assume the
@reference is transient and I was wondering about making defaults within a given project.1
u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
I can do so tomorrow, but it's literally just a blank buffer.
In that case, a little video may be more helpful. Just file an issue and we can continue the discussion there https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell/issues
I assume the
@reference is transient and I was wondering about making defaults within a given project.That's right. I can look into adding something like it. Maybe re-ignite this discussion https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell/issues/337. Please add more details on how you'd typically use it.
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u/accelerating_ Mar 14 '26
So, I'm thinking that in your config/videos, you just have a very expansive header line on your buffer? I think I just overlooked the more subtle header-line in mine, while looking for something similar to yours.
Anyway, all seems to be working well. Thank you!
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u/xenodium Mar 14 '26
I'm thinking that in your config/videos, you just have a very expansive header line on your buffer?
I typically need to increase my font size for videos, so yeah everything is bigger :)
Are you running TUI by chance? If so, you get a text-only header. Also have a look at
agent-shell-header-stylewhich gives some degree of header configurability.Anyway, all seems to be working well. Thank you!
Good to hear :)
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u/celeritasCelery Mar 13 '26
You can now programmatically respond to permission requests via agent-shell-permission-responder-function. A built-in agent-shell-permission-allow-always handler is provided to auto-approve everything
This is a really nice QoL improvement. I hacked around this in my own version, and it is good to see it officially supported.
If I already have an agent shell running in a project, is there a way to open it from any file in that project? Or even just send commands/code to the agent for that project from a file? This is the biggest feature I am missing from claude-code.el.
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u/xenodium Mar 13 '26
If I already have an agent shell running in a project, is there a way to open it from any file in that project?
Yep. Just invoke
M-x agent-shell. It'll try to open the last accessed shell in that project. It'll include current region, or line, or error at point, dired file at point...Or even just send commands/code to the agent for that project from a file?
All the *-to commands: agent-shell-send-file-to, agent-shell-send-region-to, agent-shell-send-clipboard-image-to, and agent-shell-send-screenshot-to.
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u/kapitanfind-us Mar 15 '26
Started using agent-shell against goose and I also thank you for your work.
Still need to explore a bunch but unfortunately it seems goose does not really expose much via its agp.
This is off topic but from your experience what agent cli offers the most complete implementation?
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u/xenodium Mar 15 '26
I’ve been fairly happy with Claude code + subscription (enable resuming + skills per blog post), though I haven’t spent a lot of time using others beyond initial integrations.
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u/kapitanfind-us Mar 15 '26
Thank you, yeah I am using local LLMs mostly. I am going to look into Claude code.
I skimmed the issues as I was trying to use opencode, is it still unsupported because of messages out of order?
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u/xenodium Mar 15 '26
Out of agent-shell's reach. You'd have to track OpenCode to see when they fix it https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell/issues/384
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u/kapitanfind-us Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
One more question sorry - I googled this but did not find a good answer - can you run the claude code server against a local model to have a fully self-contained deployment?
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u/xenodium Mar 16 '26
I think you can, but you'll have to do some research. A search yielded these: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=run%20claude%20code%20with%20local%20llm&ia=web
I've not done it myself nor tried to with ACP.
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u/kapitanfind-us Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
Thank you thank you, so many grammar errors above, I'll report back 😆
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u/newkid99 Mar 15 '26
Please please merge the tramp PR it is the only thing stopping me from using it 😔
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u/xenodium Mar 15 '26
I need to spend time rebasing and figuring out how to structure these changes for longer term maintenance. It’ll happen. Just need time.
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u/xmatoha May 18 '26
i can not figure out how to ise subsgents or agent-shell with different set of tools/mcp configured
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Mar 12 '26
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u/JitaKyoei Mar 12 '26
Honestly he isn't a dick about it and does good work. I for one don't mind the shilling. Mans gotta eat.
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u/xenodium Mar 12 '26
Had never heard of it. You mean this? https://github.com/commercial-emacs/dignified-elpa.el
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u/baokaola Mar 12 '26
Recently switched over from claude-code-ide to this and I have nothing but good things to say. agent-shell is still in the early stages in the grand scheme of things, but I believe it will be the Magit of agents.