Agents

Clanker supports multiple AI agents that can handle your queries in different ways. An agent is an external CLI tool or runtime that Clanker delegates to when you use the --agent flag with the ask or talk commands.

Available Agents

Agent	Flag Value	Description	Requires
Hermes	hermes	General-purpose infrastructure agent with tool use and multi-turn conversation	make setup-hermes
Claude Code	claude-code	Anthropic's Claude Code CLI with full tool use, file editing, and code analysis	claude binary installed
Copilot	copilot	GitHub Copilot coding agent (via copilot CLI)	copilot CLI installed
Codex	codex	OpenAI Codex coding agent (via copilot CLI)	copilot CLI installed

Usage

Use the --agent flag on either ask or talk:

# Single-shot query with a specific agent
clanker ask --agent claude-code "list my EC2 instances"

# Interactive multi-turn conversation
clanker talk --agent claude-code

When no --agent flag is provided, Clanker uses its built-in routing pipeline to answer the query directly using the configured AI provider.

How Agent Routing Works

When you specify --agent, Clanker bypasses its internal routing and delegates the entire query to the selected agent. The agent receives:

1. Your question as the primary prompt
2. AWS infrastructure context (if a profile is configured) injected into the prompt so the agent can reason about your live environment
3. Any additional flags like --debug for verbose output

Each agent has its own strengths. Hermes excels at multi-turn conversations with tool calls. Claude Code brings full file system access and code analysis capabilities. Choose the agent that best fits your workflow.

Adding New Agents

The agent system is designed to be extensible. Each agent is a separate package that implements a runner with streaming event support. To add a new agent:

1. Create a new package under internal/ following the pattern of internal/hermes/ or internal/claudecode/
2. Implement binary detection, process lifecycle, and event streaming
3. Add the dispatch case in cmd/ask.go and cmd/talk.go

See Also

• ask -- Single-shot queries with agent selection
• talk -- Interactive multi-turn agent conversations
• Configuration -- Setting up AI providers and credentials