Showing the working — `/details`

/details is a switch in the interface that decides how much of a turn you see. A turn is one request to the agent and what it does in reply. It starts off: what you watch a flow for is where it has got to, and what its agents said is that. Turn it on to see every tool call and every line of thinking while you debug.

Try it

Type /details on in the interface to see everything the agent does.

/details            flips it
/details on         all of the working: tool calls, thinking, printed output
/details off        which agent is working, and what it said   ← the default

You now see the agent's tool calls and thinking alongside what it says. Type /details off to hide them and read only what the agent said.

What each setting looks like

Off shows the flow: which agent has started a turn, what it said, and how long it worked. This is the reading view, and the one you get. A nine-hour Ralph loop reads as a conversation.

● claude#a1b2 is working

● Ready. The three failing tests pass now.

✻ Worked for 74s · claude#a1b2

On also shows every tool the agent reached for, every line it thought aloud, and whatever its backend printed on the way past — all of it, not a sample. This is the debugging view. It is where you find out that the agent read the wrong file, or spent four minutes grepping.

Both settings draw from the same events: text, reasoning and tool. The switch only decides which of them are drawn. Nothing is discarded. Turning it back on does not recover what scrolled past, but the trace has all of it either way, always.

It is a screen setting, not an agent setting

/details changes nothing about the run. The agent is not told about the setting, and it does not think less because you are not looking. A flow that is running is not restarted. Nothing about the cycle or the trace is different.

From Python

/details does not exist outside the interface, because there is no screen. The event stream carries the same information:

python

for event in session.stream("write the tests"):
    if event.kind in ("text", "result"):
        print(event.text)              # /details off
    elif event.kind in ("reasoning", "tool"):
        ...                            # /details on adds these

Or over a whole agent, whichever session it came from:

python

def looking(agent, session, event):
    if event.kind == "tool":
        print(f"{agent.id} used {event.text}")

agent.watch(looking)

When to reach for it

On, the first time you run an unfamiliar flow, to find out what shape its turns are.
On, when a turn is taking far longer than it should.
Off, which is where it starts: for a run you are reading rather than debugging, and for anything you will /export and show somebody.

Showing the working — /details ​

Try it ​

What each setting looks like ​

It is a screen setting, not an agent setting ​

From Python ​

When to reach for it ​

See also ​