Agent Atlas / Coding agents

charmbracelet/crush

A terminal coding agent whose public Go code exposes shell-session isolation, MCP lifecycle, configuration sharing, and the operator's live work surface.

Coding agent TUI Full dossier Reported + sourced Reviewed July 21, 2026

Intended operator

Developers who want a terminal-native coding workflow.

Primary surfaces

terminal UI / shell tools / MCP clients

Tracked repository

charmbracelet/crush

Teaching mechanism

A dead MCP session invalidates the whole registry

Recovery rebuilds the client registry as a coherent unit instead of leaving a partially alive tool menu in place.

Evidence limitRegistry replacement narrows one failure class; it does not prove remote servers are reliable or safe.

Inspect the source

System Map

Eight inspection boundaries

Model boundary

Provider configuration feeds a terminal agent loop without making the provider the whole product.

Context and memory

Workspace context, conversation state, and configuration are assembled for the active session.

Tools and execution

Shell and MCP clients act through runtime-owned sessions and registries.

Permissions and isolation

Shell-session and configuration boundaries determine which effects survive or cross workspaces.

Sessions and recovery

Vanished shell sessions and broken MCP registries have explicit cleanup and rebuild paths.

Delegation

The inspected evidence is stronger on tool lifecycle than on multi-agent delegation.

Human control

The TUI makes tool state, configuration, and live work part of the operator surface.

Evidence surface

Go tests, failure handling, terminal state, and configuration serialization provide public receipts.

Learn Through This Project

7 lessons

Chapter 2 The Invisible Prompt Chapter 3 Tool Calls: Contract, Authorization, Execution Chapter 4 Loops, Workflows, and Recovery Chapter 7 The Approval Trap Chapter 8 The Human Control Loop Chapter 9 Trust Must Make Its Case Chapter 10 The Future Has Three Branches

Compare Its Boundaries

6 labs

Comparison labTool Contracts Comparison labApproval Boundaries Comparison labHuman Workbench Comparison labSessions And Recovery Comparison labEvidence And Evaluation Comparison labMaturity Signals

Latest Reporting

8 articles

Builder Work: When an MCP Session Dies, Rebuild the Whole Registry

July 18, 2026 — Crush’s agent-attributed MCP recovery work teaches a hard-earned rule: a connection is not back until every capability it advertises is back too. charmbracelet/crush

Builder Work: Crush Builds Its Sidebar With Crush

July 15, 2026 — Crush’s agent-attributed sidebar feature is a useful reminder: delegate the bounded interaction, then inspect the state machine—not just the screen. charmbracelet/crush

Crush Stops Writing To Vanished Shell Sessions

June 30, 2026 — A public Crush patch moved shell-message persistence behind a session-existence check, turning a disappearing workspace edge case into tested agent reliability work. charmbracelet/crush

Kieran Klukas Made Crush Share Its Config Safely

June 26, 2026 — Three public Crush commits by Kieran Klukas turned shared config, OAuth refresh, and malformed tool-call state into tested failure boundaries. charmbracelet/crush

The Crush Patch That Isolated Agent Shells

June 18, 2026 — Kieran Klukas changed how Crush runs child processes so shell jobs cannot seize the parent session or corrupt the terminal UI. charmbracelet/crush

Agent Context Gets Filesystem Boundaries

June 13, 2026 — Fresh Crush, Codex, OpenClaw, and OpenCode changes show agent runtimes separating user memory, project context, and sandbox paths before work starts. charmbracelet/crush, openai/codex, openclaw/openclaw, anomalyco/opencode

Agent Control Is Moving Into the Live Interface

June 6, 2026 — Fresh OpenClaw, Crush, Hermes Agent, and Codex commits show approvals, steering, and configuration errors moving from background policy into the moments where a human can actually change an agent run. openai/codex, openclaw/openclaw, charmbracelet/crush, NousResearch/hermes-agent

Agent Events Are Getting Return Addresses

June 4, 2026 — Fresh Hermes Agent, Crush, OpenClaw, and Codex commits show agent runtimes attaching correlation, provenance, and client identity to events so the right run, session, surface, or device receives them. openai/codex, openclaw/openclaw, charmbracelet/crush, NousResearch/hermes-agent

Primary Sources

Crush repository

Primary implementation and release source.

Open Questions

Can the interface prove which external tool registry and shell session produced a result?

Evidence state describes what this Atlas profile can support today. It is not a product score and it is not evidence that uninspected capabilities are absent.