CLI Companion Ask

`ed companion ask`

Answers a question from your own memory, citing the episodes the answer rests on.

Usage:

ed companion ask <question> [--json] [--endpoint <url>]

Arguments:

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
`<question>`	text	required	The question to answer.

Options:

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
`--json`	flag	off	Emits one JSON document on stdout.
`--endpoint`	URL	environment or local default	Uses this Companion API base URL.

--json shape:

{
  "answer": "The auth refactor shipped in March, and it felt slower than it should have.",
  "chunksConsidered": 8,
  "citations": [
    {
      "episodeId": "ade45706-c7e0-480c-9125-11503509bef2",
      "occurredAt": "2026-03-14T00:00:00Z",
      "quote": "Shipped the auth refactor this week. Felt slower than it should have been.",
      "support": "verbatim",
      "title": "Warden retro"
    }
  ],
  "model": "anthropic, model claude-sonnet-5"
}

answer is the grounded reply, citations the episodes it rests on, chunksConsidered how many memory chunks were retrieved, and model the reasoner that answered. support types each citation: verbatim is checked structurally, the quote must actually appear in the cited text or the label demotes to paraphrase; inference marks the reasoner reading between the lines and renders that way.

Examples:

$ ed companion ask "how did the auth refactor go"
The auth refactor shipped in March, and it felt slower than it should have.
[1] Warden retro (2026-03-14T00:00:00Z)  [verbatim]
    "Shipped the auth refactor this week. Felt slower than it should have been."

Behaviour: the companion retrieves the eight nearest chunks by embedding, hands them to the reasoner tagged by episode id, and drops any citation that names an episode the reasoner was not shown, so an answer can only cite what it actually read. When the memory holds nothing relevant the answer says so. Needs a reasoning provider like ed companion reflect; exit 4 without one.