The vato ide CLI
Use the vato ide command to list your machines and projects, and to start, follow, resume or stop agent conversations from a terminal.
The Vato IDE CLI drives your agents from a terminal, without Vato Desktop. It controls the machines that host your projects but hosts nothing itself.
Before you start
- Install the CLI with Vato Connect. The same installer adds the
vatocommand. See Install Vato Connect. - At least one host must be online on your account: Vato Desktop on a computer, or a Vato Connect machine.
Sign in
vato ide connectThe CLI prints a sign-in link and opens your browser. Approve the sign-in with your Vato account. Add --no-open to only print the link, for example over SSH. The link waits ten minutes by default; change it with --timeout, for example --timeout 5m.
If you already ran vato-connect login on this machine, the CLI uses that sign-in. Check it with vato ide status.
Find your machines, projects and conversations
| Command | What it shows |
|---|---|
vato ide remotes | The hosts that answered, with their number of projects and conversations. |
vato ide projects | The projects of every host. Add --remote <name> for a single host. |
vato ide conversations | The conversations, with provider, model and state. Filter with --remote and --project; add --all to include archived ones. |
vato ide models | The model catalog, with model IDs and reasoning levels. Filter with --provider claude or --provider codex. |
Add --json to any of these commands to get machine-readable output.
Wherever the CLI expects a host, a project or a conversation, you can give its exact ID, the start of its ID, or an unambiguous part of its name or title.
Start a conversation
vato ide run --project my-app --prompt "Add a health check endpoint"- If several hosts are online, add
--remote <name>. - Choose the model with
--model <id>, and the reasoning level with--reasoning, for example--reasoning high. - Choose the run mode with
--mode, for example--mode Plan. - Give the conversation a name with
--title.
By default, the CLI follows the agent live and returns when the turn ends. Add --no-follow to start the turn and return right away.
Follow a conversation
vato ide fetch <conversation>prints the conversation so far.vato ide live <conversation>prints it, then follows the running turn until it ends.
Add --verbose to also see tool messages, not only the user, assistant and system messages.
Resume, change or stop a conversation
vato ide resume <conversation> --prompt "Now add tests"resume sends a new message to an existing conversation and follows the reply. It accepts --model and --reasoning too. To change settings without sending a message, use vato ide configure <conversation> with the same options, --mode, --fast or --no-fast.
To stop the running turn:
vato ide stop <conversation>Go back in a conversation
vato ide edit <conversation> <message-id> --prompt <text> replaces one of your messages. vato ide revert <conversation> <message-id> rewinds the conversation to that message.
Both commands first show a preview, including the files that would be removed. Nothing changes until you run the same command again with --yes.
Timeouts
Durations accept 250ms, 30s, 5m or 1h. --wait sets how long the CLI waits for hosts to answer (two seconds by default). --turn-timeout sets how long it follows a turn (30 minutes by default).
Other commands
| Command | Use |
|---|---|
vato ide serve --workspace <folder> | Make this machine a host for one folder. |
vato ide accounts list | List the AI accounts on this machine. |
vato ide update | Download and run the latest installer. |
vato ide help | Show every command. |
If no host answers, open Vato Desktop on one of your computers, or run vato ide serve on a signed-in machine.