Chat with agent

Every sandbox has an admin-side chat session: a Claude Sonnet agent that runs inside the Manage UI's process, connected to the sandbox over E2B. Use it for debugging, one-off fixes, and spelunking without opening a terminal.

Where to find it

Sandbox table → click a row → Chat tab (or Chat slide-out).

What the agent can do

The session is a Mastra agent with workspace tools:

• Read and edit any file on the sandbox (except src/shmastra internals, matching the Shmastra convention).
• Execute shell commands — pnpm install, pm2 restart, anything you'd run yourself.
• Manage processes — restart shmastra or healer.
• Inspect state — read env vars, check .storage/, tail logs.

Example prompts

This sandbox has been stuck on broken for an hour. Look at the healer logs and tell me what it tried.

One of the channels stopped working. Check the Telegram env vars and confirm they look right.

Run pm2 restart shmastra and watch until the health check passes.

Inspect this user's agent file at src/mastra/agents/support.ts — why does it fail at startup?

When to use chat vs terminal

Use chat when	Use terminal when
You want the agent to figure it out.	You know exactly what to run.
The fix may touch multiple files.	A one-liner does it.
You want a narrated explanation.	You want raw output.

Chat and terminal share the same sandbox; anything one does, the other can see immediately.

Privacy

The Manage UI is a local tool you run from your machine. Chat sessions don't persist anywhere unless you scroll up before closing the panel. Conversations go to Anthropic via the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your .env.local — no separate account, no extra config.

Interactive CLI alternative

Prefer a terminal?

npx tsx manage/index.mts --agent <sandbox_id>

Same agent, same tools, standard readline interface. Handy for headless debugging over SSH.