Ilan Tools

Ilan CLI

A CLI tool that manages and runs a swarm of coding agents on a list of user-defined tasks. Each task is dispatched to an agent backend — [Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code) (`claude -p`) or [Codex](https://github.com/openai/codex) (`codex exec`) — in the background, starting the instant the task is created or replied to. A task can be moved between backends at any time without losing its conversation — see [Agent backends](#agent-backends).

Installation

Requires Python 3.11+, [uv](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv), and [tmux](https://github.com/tmux/tmux).

Each agent's terminal work runs inside tmux sessions prefixed with a unique task hash, so that sessions can be tracked and automatically cleaned up when a task is completed, discarded, or killed.

git clone git@github.com:Shi-Dong/ilan-tools.git
cd ilan-tools
uv venv && uv pip install -e .

The `ilan` binary is now at `.venv/bin/ilan`. Add it to your `PATH` or invoke it directly.

Shell completion

ilan --install-completion zsh   # or bash / fish

Once installed, Tab completes task names, config keys, sub-commands, and options.

Quick start

# Add a task (inline)
ilan add -n fix-bug -d "Fix the null-pointer crash in auth.py"

# Add a task (from file)
ilan add -n big-refactor -f tasks/refactor.md

# Add a throwaway task (no -n: it is named for you, and closing it deletes it)
ilan add -d "Check whether the flaky test still flakes"

# See what's running
ilan ls

# Read the latest agent output
ilan tail fix-bug

# Reply to a blocked agent
ilan reply fix-bug "Use the OAuth2 flow instead"
# or even shorter:
ilan re fix-bug "Use the OAuth2 flow instead"

# Omit the message to see the tail first
ilan re fix-bug

# Mark a task as done
ilan done fix-bug

A background server starts automatically on the first command (port 4526). It polls every ~3 seconds, reaping finished agents and spawning new ones up to the concurrency cap.

**Warning: