Terminal & Tasks

The Software Factory panel includes a built-in terminal and a configurable task runner. Tasks are shell commands you define once in tasks.json and then trigger from the toolbar - or that AI agents can run via the run_task tool.

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The Terminal panel

The terminal lives inside the Software Factory view as a side-panel of sessions. Each session is its own tab; the currently selected one is rendered, the rest stay in memory and keep receiving output in the background.

There are two kinds of session:

Kind	What it is
Shell	An interactive shell session. Free-form - type commands and use it like any terminal.
Task	A specific task from tasks.json. Re-running the same task reuses its tab so you don't accumulate clutter.

Default shells

Platform	Shell used
Windows	pwsh.exe (PowerShell 7) if installed, otherwise powershell.exe, otherwise cmd.exe
macOS / Linux	The shell from $SHELL, otherwise /bin/bash, otherwise /bin/sh

Tasks are wrapped by cmd /d /s /c <command> on Windows and bash -c <command> on macOS/Linux, so any shell syntax valid for those is fair game.

Buffer behaviour

• Each session keeps a rolling buffer of up to 5 MB of output. When that's exceeded, older output is dropped and a [... older output truncated ...] marker is shown.
• Switching tabs detaches and re-attaches the renderer but does not lose buffered output.
• Clear wipes the visible buffer (it does not stop the underlying process).
• Remove kills the process (with SIGTERM) and removes the tab.

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Tasks (tasks.json)

Tasks are commands you configure for the whole solution or for one application. Each task becomes a button on the Software Factory toolbar. To set them up so the AI agent can build, test and run your app, see Set up tasks so the agent can build, test and run your app.

Note

Access the tasks.json directly inside of Intent Architect by clicking on the cog icon in the Software Factory toolbar.

File location

An application's tasks.json lives in the application's config folder, next to its .application.config file. The solution's tasks.json lives at the root of the Git repository or in its intent folder, and is the only one the Agents Shell uses. The toolbar's cog creates the file from a sample if it doesn't exist yet, then opens it in the editor.

The file is hot-reloaded - edits made while the Software Factory view is open update the toolbar buttons immediately. No restart needed.

Format

{
    // Each key under "tasks" is the task name (also used by the AI run_task tool).
    "tasks": {
        "build": {
            "label": "Build",
            "icon": "fa-cogs",
            "command": "dotnet build",
            "workingDirectory": ".",
            "aiAutoFix": {
                "enabled": false,
                "errorParser": "dotnet"
            }
        }
    }
}

// line comments, /* … */ block comments, and trailing commas are tolerated.

Task fields

Field	Required	Notes
label	Yes	Text shown on the toolbar button.
icon	Yes	Font Awesome class (e.g. fa-cogs, fa-play, fa-flask).
command	Yes	The shell command to run. Wrapped by the platform shell (cmd on Windows, bash on Unix).
workingDirectory	No	For an application task, relative to the application's output folder. For a solution task, relative to the folder holding tasks.json. Defaults to ..
aiAutoFix	No	See AI Auto-Fix below.
hidden	No	true keeps the task off the toolbar. The agent can still run it, and it still runs as a setup task or a compound task's child.
dependsOn	No	Names of tasks in the same file to run as part of this one, making it a compound task. dependsOrder is "parallel" (the default) or "sequence".
isBackground	No	true for a command that keeps running, such as a dev server or a watcher.
readyPattern	No	For a background task, a regular expression matching the output line that means it's ready. Without one, it counts as ready as soon as it starts.
errorPattern, beginsPattern	No	For a background task, regular expressions matching a failed build and the start of a new build.
urlPattern, previewUrl	No	The address the app serves, so the agent can open it in the preview: a regular expression whose first group captures it from the output, or a fixed URL.
triggers	No	["worktree.created"] runs the task in each new Agents Shell worktree before the agent starts. Solution tasks.json only.
producesTestCoverage	No	true marks the task that Change Review runs to measure test coverage. Solution tasks.json only.

The task's key in the tasks object is its name - referenced by the AI run_task tool and used internally for state tracking.

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AI Auto-Fix

When a task fails, AI Auto-Fix can hand the failure to a coding agent that attempts to fix it automatically.

"aiAutoFix": {
    "enabled": true,
    "errorParser": "dotnet"
}

Field	Notes
enabled	Master switch for this task. If false, failures are just shown in the terminal and nothing further happens.
errorParser	How to extract structured errors from the task output. Built-in: generic (default - line/message heuristics) and dotnet (recognises error CSxxxx: and similar). Unknown values fall back to generic.

This applies when you run the task from the toolbar. Each failure starts a new fix chat, up to 3 in a row, and a successful run resets the count. Any failed task's tab also shows Resolve with AI, which starts a fix chat on demand, whether or not aiAutoFix is on.

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Tips

• One task per concern. A build, a test, a lint, a migrate - small, single-purpose tasks compose better than one all-in-one script.
• Pick the right error parser. dotnet knows about error CSxxxx: and similar; generic falls back to line-and-message heuristics. Match the parser to the task's output.
• Use workingDirectory for monorepos. If your build needs to run inside a subdirectory of the application output, set workingDirectory instead of cd-ing inside command.
• Make long-running watchers background tasks. Set isBackground and a readyPattern for anything that keeps running, such as a file watcher or a dev server, so it counts as ready once it's up.