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Agent Host: Claude Code, Kiro CLI & OpenCode

Note

CodeLite offers two flavours of AI. This page covers Agent Host, which runs an existing coding agent in a CodeLite tab. CodeLite also has a built-in assistant, see Chat AI.

Claude Code: since CodeLite 18.5.0. Kiro CLI, OpenCode and the Agent Host name: since CodeLite 19.0.0.

The Agent Host plugin runs an existing coding agent inside a dedicated CodeLite tab, so you can work with it right next to your editor instead of switching to an external terminal. Three agents are supported:

The tab is a regular CodeLite terminal. File paths, symbols and URLs that the agent prints can be opened directly inside the IDE. Each agent type keeps its own page, so you can run them at the same time.

Enabling the Plugin

Agent Host is provided by a plugin. To use it, open Plugins → Manage Plugins... and make sure that the AgentHost plugin is checked. If you used the Claude Code plugin before, it was renamed to Agent Host and stays enabled after you upgrade.

Requirements

The plugin does not bundle the agents. It launches their command line tools, which you must install separately:

Agent Executable
Claude Code claude (see claude.com/product/claude-code)
Kiro CLI kiro-cli (see kiro.dev)
OpenCode opencode (see opencode.ai)

A workspace must be open before you can launch an agent. The plugin uses the workspace root as the agent's working directory.

Launching an Agent

There are two ways to start a session:

  • Click the agent button on the left side bar (the one with the terminal icon), and select the agent from the menu. The menu shows the keyboard shortcut of each agent (if it has one).
  • From the menu bar: Plugins → Agent Host → Launch Claude Code (Ctrl+Shift+C), Launch Kiro Cli (Ctrl+Shift+K) or Launch OpenCode (no default shortcut, you can assign one in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog).

If a tab for that agent is already open, either action switches to it instead of starting a second session. When you click the tab, the focus moves to its terminal.

Each time you launch an agent, the plugin tries to resume the most recent conversation for the workspace. If there is no previous conversation, it starts a fresh session automatically. When the agent process exits, its tab closes on its own.

Locating the Agent Executable

By default, the plugin looks up claude, kiro-cli and opencode on your PATH. If an executable is not on the PATH, or you want to use a specific build, set an explicit path:

  • Plugins → Agent Host → Settings...
  • Enter the full path to the executable of the agent (there is one field for each agent) and click OK.

Leave a field empty to go back to resolving the executable from the PATH.

Note

On a remote workspace (opened via the Remoty plugin over SSH/SFTP), the plugin always runs the agent from the remote host's PATH. The configured local executable path is not used in that case.

Agent System Prompt

Agent Host passes the Chat AI system prompt to the agent when it starts. Edit it with Chat AI → Edit System Prompt....

Agent How the prompt is passed
Claude Code Saved to a SYSTEM_PROMPT.md file in CodeLite's settings folder and passed with --append-system-prompt-file.
Kiro CLI Written to .kiro/steering/SYSTEM_PROMPT.md in the workspace.
OpenCode Saved to a SYSTEM_PROMPT.md file in the .codelite folder of the workspace. CodeLite also writes an opencode.json file next to it, which lists the prompt file under instructions, and starts OpenCode with the OPENCODE_CONFIG environment variable pointing to it.

If the system prompt is empty, nothing is passed to the agent.

Note

For Kiro CLI, the file in your workspace is overwritten each time the agent starts. You may want to add .kiro/steering/SYSTEM_PROMPT.md to your .gitignore.

Note

For OpenCode, the prompt is added to the OpenCode instructions. It does not replace the OpenCode system prompt. On a remote workspace, OPENCODE_CONFIG is set only for the local SSH process, so the prompt is not passed to OpenCode unless your SSH account forwards that variable.

Clickable Terminal Output

Inside the agent tab, Ctrl+Left-Click (Cmd+Left-Click on macOS) any word or path that the agent prints to open it inside CodeLite, without leaving the terminal:

  • File paths: opened in the CodeLite editor. Relative paths are resolved against the workspace.
  • Directories: opened in your system's file explorer.
  • Executables: launched with the system's default handler.
  • Plain URLs: opened in your default web browser.
  • Anything else, for example a class or symbol name, is looked up through the Open Resource dialog. You can jump straight to its definition even when the agent did not print a full file path.

Terminal Right-Click Menu

Right-click inside the agent terminal to open its menu. Besides Copy, Paste and Refresh (restarts the agent), it has:

  • When text is selected: Search '<text>' in Workspace and Open Symbol '<text>'. Only the first line of the selection is used. Search ... in Workspace shows the keyboard shortcut of Grep Selection in the Workspace (if you assigned one), and that shortcut also works while the agent terminal has the focus.
  • The Review Buddy actions, see below.

The shortcuts of the main window (for example F6, which toggles the terminal view) also work while the agent terminal has the focus.

Review Buddy

Review Buddy starts a second agent (any of the supported agents) that reviews the work that is not pushed yet, in a pane next to the main agent. Start it from the right-click menu of the agent terminal.

  • The two agents work in the same folder and talk to each other through files in .agents/reviews/<id>/. The reviewer writes its comments, the main agent fixes them, and the reviewer checks again. This repeats until the review is clean, or for at most 5 rounds.
  • CodeLite types the requests into the terminals for you. It tells you when the review is finished, when the round limit is reached (the last fixes are not reviewed in that case), or when an agent seems to wait for you for a long time. If you are not looking at the page, you get a system notification.
  • The right-click menu also has Resend, Stop, Open the Latest Review and Close Review Buddy.
  • It needs a working directory inside a git repository (a sub-folder or a worktree is fine). It works for remote workspaces too. The .agents/reviews/ folder is added to .git/info/exclude, so it does not show in git status.

To pass extra command line arguments to the reviewer (for example, a custom agent), set them in Plugins → Agent Host → Settings..., on the Review Buddy page. There is one field for each agent.

Agent Host on Remote Workspaces

When your workspace is a remote one (via the Remoty plugin), the agent tab connects over the same SSH account and runs the agent on the remote host. Clicking a file path resolves it as a remote file, opened through the SFTP file cache, instead of looking for it on the local disk.

Tab Behavior

  • The tab's title tracks the title that the agent reports for the current session.
  • The terminal's colors and font follow CodeLite's active editor theme, and update automatically if you switch themes while the session is running.

Tip: you can keep several long-running agent sessions for different workspaces open in separate CodeLite windows. Each workspace gets its own tab.