ask

name	ask
description	Non-interactive interface to the other coding backends. Runs one prompt against a chosen backend through the ask-claude, ask-codex, ask-glm, and ask-kimi wrappers and returns its output as stream-json or text. Use when delegating a self-contained build or investigation task to another backend, collecting an independent review of a design, plan, or diff, asking the same question of several backends to compare answers, or resuming an earlier backend session by ID. Triggers on "ask codex", "ask kimi", "ask glm", "ask claude", "get a second opinion from another model", or any request to hand work to a different coding backend without an interactive session.
argument-hint	<backend> [-C DIR] [-S SESSION_ID] [--text] [--policy-file FILE] <prompt>
user-invocable	true

Ask

One interface for running a prompt against another coding backend without an interactive session. Each backend has its own wrapper, and all of them share the same arguments, so switching backends means changing only the program name.

The wrappers live beside this file. Invoke them by absolute path; they are not on PATH.

<skill directory>/ask-<backend> [-C DIR] [-S SESSION_ID] [--text]
                                [--policy-file FILE] [PROMPT...]

Quote the prompt as a single argument. It routinely contains spaces and shell metacharacters such as (, ), ;, #, *, and [, and an unquoted prompt is re-parsed by the shell before the wrapper ever starts. When the prompt is long or itself contains quotes, pipe it in on standard input instead.

Arguments

Argument	Effect
PROMPT...	Prompt text. All positional arguments are joined with spaces. When none are given, the prompt is read from standard input.
-C, --cwd DIR	Working directory for the backend. Defaults to the current directory and must already exist.
-S, --session ID	Resume that exact backend session instead of starting a new one.
--text	Emit human-readable text. Without it the output is stream-json.
--policy-file FILE	Prepend an engineering policy to the request. The file must exist and be non-empty.

Backends

Wrapper	Backend invoked	Model and effort
ask-kimi	kimi	kimi-code/k3, 1M context, thinking effort max
ask-claude	claude in safe mode, permission mode auto	pinned claude-opus-5[1m], effort max
ask-codex	codex exec	gpt-5.6-sol, reasoning effort max
ask-glm	the Claude harness pointed at Z.AI	glm-5.2[1m], effort max

Policy files

--policy-file carries standing engineering rules that are not part of the task itself. It is delivered as a system-level instruction where the backend supports one, and otherwise prepended to the prompt above a # Task heading. Use it to state invariants the backend must respect; keep the prompt itself about the work to be done.

Output and exit status

The wrapper replaces itself with the backend process, so the exit status is the backend's own, except for two cases it reports itself:

Exit code	Meaning
2	Invalid request: empty prompt, missing working directory, unreadable or empty policy file, unknown backend, or a malformed Z.AI key.
126	The backend program is not installed or could not be executed.

Read the output before acting on it. A backend that answers confidently can still be wrong about this repository, so verify claims against the working tree rather than relaying them.

Credentials

ask-glm reads the Z.AI key from $PERSONAL_SECRET_PATH/zai.key at invocation time. The file must contain only a key in {key-id}.{secret} form. The key reaches the child process through its environment, never through command arguments, and is never written to persistent configuration. The wrapper also clears inherited Claude authentication variables from that child environment so the session cannot fall back to the wrong provider.

Scope

These wrappers only launch a backend. Choosing the policy, validating the output, testing the result independently, feeding corrections back through the same session, and deciding whether the work can be integrated all remain with the caller.