How to use Ask Agent with your coding agent

Ask Agent is Walkie's ask-a-question key. You hold it, say something, and an agent answers — Walkie shows its speaking waveform and reads the answer aloud so you never leave what you were doing. In Cloud Mode, out of the box, the answer comes from Walkie's own assistant. In On-Device Mode that hosted assistant is refused — point it at Claude Code, Codex, or another agent on this computer, or it will not send the question to Walkie. On Omarchy it follows the agent the machine designates. This page is about pointing it at a coding agent: the one on your computer that can actually open files, run commands and change settings. You say "what's eating my disk space?", the agent looks, and Walkie tells you.

Which agents work

Everything in the Answers come from list, in the order it appears. Agents Walkie cannot find on this computer are still listed, greyed out with "(not installed)" next to them.

Every coding agent runs with its own account, its own tools and its own permissions — exactly as it would if you typed to it in a terminal. Walkie's connectors are not involved while an outside agent is answering; the Connectors section in Settings → Agent says so while one is selected.

Set it up

1. 1
   Install the agent the way its maker documents, and make sure it works in a terminal on its own first.Walkie only hands over the words. If the agent is not signed in or is not installed, there is nothing for Walkie to hand them to.
2. 2
   Open Walkie and go to Settings → Agent. Switch on Enable Agent.If the page shows an Experimental notice instead, click the button on it first — the Agent lives behind that toggle.
3. 3
   Under Answers come from, choose your agent.Installed agents are listed by name. One marked "(not installed)" is one Walkie could not find — see Why is my agent greyed out? below.
4. 4
   Read the status line under the list.It says where Walkie found the agent — for example "Found at ~/.nvm/versions/node/v22.16.0/bin/claude" — or that it cannot find it. If it cannot, Walkie's assistant answers until that is fixed.
5. 5
   Check the Ask Agent shortcut on the same page, then hold it and ask something.The defaults are below. Click the shortcut field and press a new combination to change it.

The Ask Agent key

Any launcher, script or window manager can trigger Ask Agent too, on every platform: run walkie --quick-ask. One press is enough — Walkie notices when you stop speaking.

Hear it, or watch it

There are two ways a coding agent can answer, and a switch on the settings page picks between them. It appears whenever an installed outside agent is selected — on Omarchy, for This computer's agent only when that agent is one Walkie can run quietly.

Where the window opens: on macOS in Terminal (or whichever app you have set to open .command files, such as iTerm2 or Ghostty); on Windows in the agent's own console window; on Linux through Omarchy's launcher when it is present, otherwise your desktop's default terminal. On Omarchy with This computer's agent selected, the window path is Omarchy's own omarchy-agent-prompt launcher.

How it talks back

Ask Agent answers the way a person would on a call, not the way a terminal prints. A question is answered within a couple of seconds and spoken sentence by sentence as the reply is written. A request that needs the computer gets a spoken "On it" at once, and the agent takes over; while it works, the panel above the pill lists what it is doing and thinking, and the words it says are read aloud with the highlight as they arrive. Replies are shaped for speech — short, plain, no headings or bullet points read out — and the full text stays in the panel and in your history.

With Claude Code chosen, a quick question goes to its fastest model with no tools, on your own plan; only a request that needs the computer runs the full agent. Press ✕ on the panel or Esc to stop the agent and the voice together.

When the agent ends on a choice — "Which of these do you want?" with a list, or a yes-or-no question — the panel shows the choices as buttons. Click one, or just say it ("the second one", "yes"), and that becomes your next turn.

Say "go back to my last conversation" and the panel lists your recent conversations to pick from, by voice or by click. With Claude Code or Codex, Walkie brings back the agent's own session too, so it remembers what it did, not just what was said.

The panel's Open in Claude Code (or Open in Codex) button opens the whole conversation in a terminal, resumed on the agent's own session, when you want to see everything the panel only summarised.

Send work to a session you already have open

With Claude Code as your agent, Walkie works out what you are asking before it does anything with it.

Pick the session — click it or say it — and Walkie brings that window to the front, types your request in and presses Return, then tells you it did. Typing it in works in Terminal on a Mac.

Quick calendar answers

Ask "what's on my calendar tomorrow?" and Walkie answers in a few seconds from the Google Calendar you connected for Meetings, instead of waiting on your agent. Turn on Quick calendar answers in Settings → Agent. It is off by default, and it works when your agent is Claude Code.

Things to ask

Anything a coding agent could do if you typed it. Short and concrete works best — say what you want, not how to do it.

• "What's eating my disk space?"
• "Make the terminal font bigger."
• "Which of my Homebrew packages are out of date?"
• "Summarise the git log for this week in my Work folder."
• "Turn on dark mode at sunset."
• "Rename every screenshot on my desktop with the date it was taken."
• "Add a battery widget to the bar." (Omarchy)
• "Why is my fan running? Find what's using the CPU."

Using your own command

Custom command… runs any program that takes the words and prints the answer — a script of your own, an agent Walkie does not list, or a listed agent installed somewhere unusual. Type the command line in the field that appears:

hermes chat --yolo --query={prompt}

• Put {prompt} where your words should go. Leave it out and they are added as the last argument.
• It runs from your home folder (or your Work folder) and never through a shell — so your words can contain anything. No window, unless you turn on Open the agent's window instead, which works for a custom command too.
• If the program is not something Walkie can find by name, give its full path: /Users/you/.local/bin/my-agent. A full path always works.

What it costs, and where your words go

Two different services are involved, and each bills its own part.

What Walkie keeps the agent away from

When Walkie starts Claude Code, it starts it locked down. A request can carry text Walkie did not write — a calendar invite, a web page, a file the agent opened — and that text could try to talk the agent into something you never asked for.

• Saved passwords and keys. The agent is blocked from reading the usual places saved passwords, keys and browser logins are kept, and Walkie's own sign-in.
• Links and web pages. Before it fetches a web page or opens a link, Walkie shows an Allow button, and nothing opens until you press it. When the agent is working in its own window, it asks there instead. Searching the web does not ask.

On Omarchy

Omarchy designates one agent for the whole machine with omarchy default agent claude (or codex, opencode, hermes, openclaw, grok, and others such as Pi, Crush and Cursor CLI). Walkie reads that choice and offers it as This computer's agent. When the designated agent is one Walkie can run quietly — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes, OpenClaw or Grok — you get the read-back by default and the window toggle to change it; otherwise Walkie opens Omarchy's own agent window with your words. The keys and the bindings.lua block are in Walkie on Omarchy.