IPC Protocol

IPC Protocol

Extension ↔ CLI communication when the daemon runs with --ipc.

Transport

• One JSON object per line on stdin (extension → CLI)
• One JSON object per line on stdout (CLI → extension)
• stderr only for logs (never parsed as JSON)

Message shape

{
  "id": "uuid",
  "action": "chat:send",
  "payload": { },
  "error": "optional"
}

Key actions

Action	Direction	Purpose
ping / pong	both	Health check
chat:send	ext→cli	Start chat
chat:send:ack	cli→ext	Request accepted
chat:chunk	cli→ext	Streaming text
chat:cancel	ext→cli	Stop generation
chat:error	cli→ext	Error for session
context:build	ext→cli	Build context
spec:parse	ext→cli	Parse spec dir
agent:list	ext→cli	List agents

Debugging

View → Output → Todd of AIDLC — extension-side trace (secrets redacted).

CLI logs appear as [cli] ... in the same channel.