Verbose progress mode

Untether shows progress messages as the agent works, updating in real time. Control how much detail you see — from compact summaries to full tool details — so you can follow along from your phone or get a quick glance from Telegram on any device.

Enable verbose mode#

Send /verbose on to see full details for each action:

/verbose on

In verbose mode, progress messages include file paths, command text, glob patterns, and other tool-specific details alongside the action status.

Compact mode#

Send /verbose off to switch back to compact summaries:

/verbose off

Compact mode shows only the action status and title — no extra detail. This is the default.

Compare the two#

Here’s the same action shown in both modes:

Compact

...tool: edit: Update import order

Verbose

...tool: edit: Update import order
   file: src/untether/runner_bridge.py
   - from untether.events import EventFactory
   + from untether.events import EventFactory, StartedEvent

Verbose mode adds context lines underneath each action, so you can see exactly what the agent is doing without waiting for the final answer.

Set global default in config#

To make verbose the default for all chats:

=== “untether config”

```sh
untether config set progress.verbosity "verbose"
```

=== “toml”

```toml title="~/.untether/untether.toml"
[progress]
verbosity = "verbose"  # verbose | compact
```

Adjust max action lines#

Control how many actions appear in the progress message. Actions beyond this limit are collapsed:

=== “untether config”

```sh
untether config set progress.max_actions 10
```

=== “toml”

```toml title="~/.untether/untether.toml"
[progress]
max_actions = 10  # 0-50, default 5
```

Set to 0 to hide the action list entirely, or increase it to see more history.

Hot-reload [progress] settings (verbosity, max_actions, heartbeat_interval, min_render_interval, group_chat_rps) hot-reload — editing them in untether.toml applies on the next run without restart (#269).

Long-running tool tail (heartbeat)#

Long-running tool calls (Bash, BashOutput, ScheduleWakeup, Monitor, KillShell, …) get an automatic elapsed-time tail on the progress message after ~60 s — ▸ Bash · 3m 47s · npm run build — so a glancing user can answer “is it alive? what’s it doing? for how long?” without waiting for the next JSONL event (#481). The tail appears regardless of /verbose state.

In verbose mode the tool’s format_verbose_detail line additionally renders:

• BashOutput — the last line of result_preview (so 10-min Cloudflare deploy polls show → Deploy Production: in_progress instead of a static ▸ BashOutput)
• ScheduleWakeup — countdown + reason: → fires in 4m 12s · "build check"
• Monitor — countdown remaining
• KillShell — target shell id

Tune the heartbeat tick via [progress] heartbeat_interval (5–120 s, default 30 s) — every tick walks the open-action set and forces a re-render whenever any action is older than 60 s. Strict “rolling stdout sub-line every 5 s” cannot be achieved without upstream Claude Code changes; the BashOutput-polling path is the proxy and refreshes at each polling cycle (~15 s in practice).

Per-chat override#

The /verbose toggle overrides the global config for the current chat. This override persists until you clear it or restart Untether.

Clear override#

Remove the per-chat setting to revert to the global config value:

/verbose clear

Related#

• Configuration — full config reference for progress settings
• Chat sessions — session management and per-chat state