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README-chat.md

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b00t chat protocol

PromptExecution agents now exchange lightweight JSON chat payloads over two transports:

  • 🧵 Local IPC – Unix domain socket at ~/.b00t/chat.channel.socket
  • 📡 NATS stub – retains subject namespacing for future federation

Message envelope

{
  "channel": "mission.delta",
  "sender": "frontend.agent",
  "body": "handoff complete",
  "metadata": {"ticket": "OPS-123"},
  "timestamp": "2025-03-04T05:30:00Z"
}
  • channel keeps conversations scoped per mission/crew.
  • sender is free-form but SHOULD stay unique inside a channel.
  • body is plain text; additional structure belongs in metadata.
  • timestamp MUST be RFC 3339; producer SHOULD use UTC.

Local socket lifecycle

  1. b00t-mcp boots and calls b00t_chat::spawn_local_server.
  2. The server binds the socket, accepts JSON lines, and queues them inside ChatInbox.
  3. Before any command response is emitted, the MCP server drains the inbox and appends <🥾>{ "chat": { "msgs": N }}</🥾> to the outgoing payload.
  4. Drained messages are logged (channel, sender, body) so operators can stitch context.

Consumers MUST write newline-delimited JSON to the socket. The helper client in b00t-cli chat send already handles serialization, flushing, and fallbacks.

NATS subjects (stub)

Until credentials are provisioned, the NATS transport simply logs intent. The subject prefix matches historical ACP conventions: chat.{channel}. Swapping in async-nats will require exporting JWT-authenticated configuration from the MCP environment.

CLI usage

# Local sockets (default)
b00t-cli chat send --channel mission.delta --message "artifact staged"

# Explicit transport selection
b00t-cli chat send --transport nats --message "deploying" \
  --metadata '{"env":"prod"}'

# Discover socket path
b00t-cli chat info

Slash commands

Slash messages prefixed with /b00t can be translated into CLI invocations via b00t_chat::parse_b00t_command. The initial model-management verbs match the new datum workflow:

/b00t model list            # Inspect cached datums
/b00t model download llava  # Delegate to `b00t-cli model download llava`
/b00t model env deepseek    # Emit env exports for direnv blending
/b00t model remove llava    # Remove cached weights (`--yes` implied)
/b00t model serve llava     # Launch default vLLM container for LLaVA
/b00t model stop            # Stop the active model container

Chat front-ends can call BootCommand::to_cli_args() to hand the parsed action off to the existing b00t-cli model … commands.

Integration checklist

  • Rename workspace crate to b00t-chat
  • Replace acp CLI command tree with chat
  • Start chat listener inside b00t-mcp and surface unread counts
  • Update Docker scaffolding and docs to reflect the new library

Future work SHOULD cover:

  1. Wiring a broadcast-friendly listener so dedicated viewers can tail messages.
  2. Completing the NATS transport with authentication + reconnect handling.
  3. Extending metadata conventions (e.g. thread IDs, attachments) once the socket protocol stabilizes.