Docs/Tutorials/Queue the next instruction
Tutorials

Line up the next instruction

5 min read

You are watching an agent work and you think of the next thing you want it to do. It is two minutes into a task and going well. Interrupting it now to say the next thing is a bad trade, and holding the thought until it finishes means you have to be there at the moment it finishes.

There is a third option, and it is the habit that makes running several agents bearable: write the instruction now, queue it, and send it when you are ready.

Five minutes. You need DevThrottle open with one session that is actually working on something. This is the deeper half of The prompt bar is not the terminal, which introduces the queue; everything below is what to do once you are using it.

  1. Write it while the agent is still busy

    Type the next instruction into the prompt bar under the terminal, exactly as you would any other. Nothing has reached the agent - the prompt bar is a separate box that lives outside the terminal, so you can write slowly, change your mind, or dictate it, and the agent carries on undisturbed.

  2. Queue it instead of sending it

    Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter - or click Queue, the third button down beside the box, under Send and Speak. The box empties, and your instruction is now in the session's queue. Two things on screen tell you so: the Queue button turns red and starts counting, reading Queue (1), and the queue itself appears in the panel on the right of the window.

    If that right panel is collapsed, expand it with the chevron at its edge to see the list.

  3. Understand what the queue is, because it is not an autopilot

    This is the step that decides whether the habit works for you or quietly costs you an afternoon. Nothing in the queue is sent until you send it. DevThrottle does not watch for the agent to finish and feed it the next item. The queue is a list of instructions you have written and not yet delivered - a notepad with an order to it, attached to the right session.

    That is a deliberate limit rather than an oversight. An agent that has stopped has either finished cleanly or stopped to ask you something, and those look the same from outside. Firing the next instruction into the second case would answer a question with unrelated text.

  4. Stack a few, and put them in the order you want

    Queue two or three more the same way. Each item in the panel carries its own controls: arrows to move it up or down the list, Edit to open it in the larger editor and reword it, and X to drop it. Use them - the order you thought of things in is rarely the order you want them done in.

  5. Send one when the agent stops

    When the session goes quiet, open the queue and click Pop on the item you want. Its text lands back in the prompt bar and it leaves the queue. Read it once - the agent's last turn may well have changed what you want to say - then send it with Ctrl+Enter.

    Popping and sending are two separate actions on purpose. That gap is where you adjust an instruction you wrote twenty minutes ago against what the agent actually did in the meantime, and it is the main reason queueing beats remembering.

Warning
Clear at the top of the queue panel empties it immediately, with no confirmation and no undo. Several carefully written instructions can go with one click. Remove items one at a time with X unless you really do mean all of them.
Tip
Pop appends to whatever is already in the prompt bar rather than replacing it, so send or clear what you are holding before you pop, or the two run together into one message.
Note
The queue belongs to the session, not to the window. Queued prompts are saved with the session and are still there after you restart DevThrottle - so an instruction you wrote last night survives to the morning.
Note
The same queue is in your browser, where each item has a Send button of its own that submits it straight away - one press instead of pop-then-send.

Next

Once you have sent an instruction and the agent has acted on it, read the difference before you keep it: See what changed. For every prompt-bar control and shortcut in one place, see The embedded terminal.