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The :agent launcher ships in 0.13.0 and later. Update to the latest release to get it — see Installation.
Vorto can run an AI coding agent in a pane inside the editor, alongside your buffers. The agent process runs under a pseudo-terminal that Vorto renders as a full terminal pane, so a TUI agent draws and behaves exactly as it would in your shell. There is no external multiplexer to set up — Vorto owns the pane. The launcher is a thin layer over whatever agent CLI you already use. Vorto doesn’t ship an agent or talk to a model itself; it spawns the command you name (Claude, Codex, Gemini, Aider, or anything you configure) and gives it a place to live next to your code. When the agent needs context, :agent explain and :agent chat hand it your active file or visual selection.

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Launch an agent

Run the command prompt with : in Normal mode and type:
A bare :agent launches your configured default agent. The first time you run it with no default set, Vorto opens a picker listing the built-in agents — choose one and Vorto remembers it by writing default into your [agent] config (workspace-local config if present, otherwise the global file). After that, a bare :agent goes straight to that agent. The agent opens in a new pane. While that pane is focused, every keystroke goes to the agent — it’s a real terminal — with one exception: Ctrl-W is reserved for window navigation. Use those to move focus back to a buffer; everything else — including Ctrl-W sequences the agent might otherwise want — stays with Vorto’s window grammar. While the agent pane is focused, the mouse wheel scrolls the agent terminal’s scrollback rather than walking the prompt. Typing snaps the view back to the live bottom.

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One agent, reused

Vorto tracks a single agent session. Re-running :agent focuses the existing pane rather than spawning a second agent. The agent process keeps running even if you close its pane with :close — that detaches the pane without killing the process, so a later :agent re-attaches to the same session. The pane closes on its own when the agent process exits. Running :agent after that starts a fresh session.

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Send your buffer to the agent

:agent takes an optional intent and a target, so you can launch (or focus) the agent with a prompt about what you’re looking at already loaded:
  • explain builds a prompt asking the agent to explain the target.
  • chat opens an open-ended prompt about the target.

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@file — the active buffer

@file hands the agent the path of the active buffer. If the buffer is unsaved or a scratch buffer with no path, Vorto first snapshots its contents to a temporary file so the agent has something on disk to read.

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@selection — the visual selection

@selection scopes the prompt to text you’ve selected. Select a range in Visual mode, then press : — Vorto captures the selection at that moment — and run:
The selected text is embedded in the prompt as a fenced code block.
The selection is captured when you open the command prompt from Visual mode, not when you press Enter. Make your selection first, then type :.

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How the prompt reaches the agent

How Vorto delivers the prompt depends on whether a pane is already open:
  • Fresh launch — the prompt is passed as a launch argument, following the agent’s prompt_args template (see below).
  • Existing pane — the prompt is pasted in using bracketed paste, so a multi-line @selection block arrives as a single paste instead of submitting line by line.

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Configure agents

The agent catalog and default live under [agent] and [agents.<name>] in config.toml. Your entries overlay the built-in catalog: a block whose name matches a built-in overrides it; a new name adds an agent.

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Built-in catalog

Four agents ship in the catalog. Each assumes its CLI is already on your PATH — Vorto launches the command, it doesn’t install it.

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prompt_args and launch-time prompts

prompt_args is the template Vorto uses to pass a prompt to a freshly launched agent. Most CLIs accept the prompt as a positional argument, which is the default (["{prompt}"]). Aider’s positional arguments are file paths, so it takes the prompt via --message instead. Set prompt_args = [] to opt an agent out of launch-time seeding entirely — a prompted :agent then opens it bare, and you can paste the context in yourself.
prompt_args only affects a fresh launch. When the prompt goes to an already-open pane, Vorto pastes it in regardless of this setting.

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Next steps

Copilot

Inline ghost-text completions — the other half of Vorto’s optional AI, served by copilot-language-server.

Commands

The full : command reference, including window and split management.