Common workflows

Each of these is a task you might bring to Hotline, with the settings it needs. They are starting points; mix them.

Put a coding agent you already use in the room

You pay for Claude Code or Codex already and want it as a teammate.

1. Make sure its CLI runs in a terminal on this machine (claude, codex, cursor-agent, opencode, gemini, grok or muse), signed in.
2. New teammate, then under Thinks with → Agent pick it from the agents you already use. A row that cannot start says what is missing. In the welcome, choose An AI coding tool you already have under How they think instead; the first teammate’s form has no Agent choice.
3. Give it the project folder as its working directory.

It keeps its own login, tools and permission modes. Hotline adds the room: the conversation, schedules, its colleagues, a computer, your phone. See Teammates and drivers.

Hand over a long job and walk away

1. Tell the teammate the job and what “done” looks like: “upgrade the project to the new framework version, get the tests passing, and tell me what you could not fix.”
2. Leave. Closing the window does not stop it; the teammate keeps working.
3. A toast, or a notification on your phone, tells you when it finishes or needs you.

If it needs something only a person can do, such as a login or a decision, a Needs you card waits in the conversation. Its turn does not wait for you: it carries on with what it can, and your answer arrives as a new message.

Ask about something else while it works

The teammate is busy and you have a quick, unrelated question. More → Start a side thread and ask there. The main work is not interrupted and the side thread does not fill its context. See Side threads.

If your message is about the work in hand, such as a correction, just send it in the main conversation. It reaches the teammate mid-turn.

A morning report

Have a teammate check something every day and speak up only when there is something to say.

1. Open its pane (⌘/Ctrl + I), and under Schedules choose Add a schedule. Pick Repeating, every 1 days, and under Say write a prompt such as “Check the overnight CI runs and open issues labelled urgent. Tell me only what needs me.”
2. Tick Quiet for the job. A quiet run stays out of the conversation unless it finds something worth telling you; a Hotline Agent teammate then tells you as a normal reply and your phone is notified.

Hotline has to be running when the schedule is due. See Schedules.

A second pair of eyes

Two teammates, one that writes and one that reviews.

1. Make a reviewer teammate with the same project folder and a goal such as “Review changes for correctness and say what you would block on.” Putting it on a different model from the writer is useful: it misses different things.
2. Tell the writer: “when you have a change ready, ask the reviewer to look at it.”
3. The first time, approve the pair on the card that appears.

The review arrives in the writer’s conversation, and the exchange is kept as a conversation between the two. See Teammates working together.

Split work across specialists

Give each teammate one area: a backend teammate in the server repository, a frontend one in the web app, a docs one. Tell one of them to hand pieces to the others. Each handoff opens a work thread on the receiving teammate, and the result comes back to the sender. You can keep talking to every teammate while it works on what it was handed.

Let a teammate use the web for you

1. In the teammate’s pane, under Computer, turn on A computer of its own. The first start downloads the desktop image. See The computer.
2. Ask: “sign up for the staging dashboard and screenshot the usage page.”
3. When it reaches a login it cannot do, a Needs you card appears in the conversation. Press Open the screen on it and type the password yourself; it goes to the desktop, never through the agent. Press Done when you have finished, or Decline.

For a quick lookup, the computer is not needed: every teammate can search the web with web_search.

Work across two repositories

A teammate that edits an app and needs to read a shared library: add the library under Folders in its pane, with Can edit off. The teammate can read it without Whole machine access. See Teammates and drivers.

Talk it through

When typing is too slow, call the teammate with the phone key at the head of its conversation. Describe the problem out loud; the teammate answers in a sentence or two and writes the full answer, with code and links, into the chat. Its work keeps going between your questions. See Calls and dictation.

Start fresh on a new subject

Finished one piece of work and starting another with the same teammate? More → Start a new chapter. The teammate writes a handoff note and starts the next subject with a clean context. If you went too far, Reopen previous chapter takes it back one step. See Chapters.