cao-session-management

name	cao-session-management
description	Interact with CAO (CLI Agent Orchestrator) — launch multi-agent sessions, check status, send follow-up instructions, unblock stuck terminals, or shut down sessions. Use when working with CAO sessions in any capacity.

CAO Session Management

Overview

CAO runs multi-agent workflows in named sessions. A conductor agent inside each session orchestrates the work.

Core Concepts

• Session: A group of agent terminals working together
• Conductor: The supervisor terminal — receives instructions, delegates to workers
• Provider: LLM backend. Default kiro_cli, override with --provider

Launching a Session

Every cao launch MUST include:

• --agents PROFILE — for kiro_cli provider, run kiro-cli agent list to discover profiles; otherwise ask the user
• --headless — required from an LLM agent; without it cao tries to attach tmux
• --session-name NAME — cao adds cao- prefix automatically
• --working-directory DIR — a wrong path silently breaks the session with no recovery short of shutdown and relaunch. Ask the user if unclear. Always wrap in single quotes to pass the literal path to the server (prevents local shell expansion of ~ or variables before the value reaches cao).

cao launch --agents <profile> --headless --yolo \
  --session-name <name> --working-directory '<path>' "<task>"

--yolo skips confirmation prompts. Required when launching from an agent — interactive prompts will stall the session.

For SOP-driven workflows (Kiro provider): launch with /prompts to discover available SOPs, then send the matched SOP name prefixed with @ (e.g., @my-sop-name), then send the task — each as separate messages after polling for completed status.

Commands

Command	Description
cao session list	List active sessions
cao session status SESSION	Conductor status and last response
cao session status SESSION --workers	Include worker terminals
cao session status SESSION --terminal ID	Drill into a specific terminal
cao session status SESSION --json	Machine-readable output; use to extract terminal IDs
cao session send SESSION "msg"	Send and wait until completion (sync)
cao session send SESSION "msg" --timeout N	Send and wait up to N seconds
cao session send SESSION "msg" --async	Fire-and-forget without waiting
cao session send SESSION "msg" --terminal ID	Send to a specific terminal
cao shutdown --session SESSION	Shut down a session
cao shutdown --all	Shut down all sessions

cao session send waits for completion and returns output inline by default. With --async, it sends and returns immediately without waiting. With --timeout N, it waits up to N seconds — if the timeout expires, the agent is still running; check status later. Session names in commands use the cao- prefixed form (e.g. --session-name mywork → use cao-mywork).

Worker Communication

Inside a session, the conductor talks to workers via two MCP tools:

Prefer communicating through the conductor (cao session send SESSION "msg") rather than directly to worker terminals. Bypassing the conductor leaves it without state on what was asked or answered, which causes confusion. Two exceptions: unblocking a stuck worker, and follow-up questions to a persistent async worker (see below).

handoff (blocking) — conductor sends task and waits for the worker to reach COMPLETED status, then reads the output. If it times out, the worker is still running — the conductor just stopped waiting.

assign (non-blocking) — conductor sends task and returns immediately. The worker is expected to call send_message back to the conductor's terminal ID when done. Each terminal only knows its own ID via $CAO_TERMINAL_ID.

By default the conductor uses sync (handoff). You can override this by explicitly asking it to use async or sync protocol when sending it a task.

Async workers (assign) stay alive after completing their task and can answer follow-up questions — useful for ongoing investigation where you want to keep querying the same worker. In this case, sending directly to the worker terminal is appropriate:

cao session send SESSION "<follow-up question>" --terminal <worker-terminal-id>

Common Mistakes

Wrong working directory — agents won't find files, builds fail with confusing errors.

Stuck conductor — conductor is waiting on a worker that stopped responding. Check the worker's status first, then decide: prompt it to continue and send results back, or ask it to resend if it already finished. Never re-delegate work that may still be running — it risks duplicate work.

cao session status SESSION --workers
cao session status SESSION --terminal <worker-terminal-id>
cao session send SESSION "continue your work, then send results to terminal <conductor-terminal-id>" --terminal <worker-terminal-id>

Get the conductor's terminal ID from cao session status SESSION --json.