tlive usage guide

tlive is a self-hosted monitoring/approval layer. Claude Code sessions report through global hooks; Codex sessions are watched through an app-server companion process (no hooks, no trust step). Completions and failures land in IM (Telegram/Feishu) and the web dashboard, where you can reply-to-continue. The posture (tlive mode, default notify) decides whether approvals are held for a remote answer, in escalation order: off makes every hook a no-op; notify only watches + notifies (the shim never holds an approval — prompts stay 100% native) and reports to the machine (desktop toast + dashboard) — IM stays quiet about a dialog only the terminal can answer, except once ever per chat, when a card explains why and offers the switch to full; full is the posture that puts approvals on your phone: it turns on remote approval for the main session (Allow/Deny from IM/desktop/dashboard), in parallel with the terminal dialog — first answer wins; all holds sub-agent approvals too, with no terminal dialog for a held one until the window ends, so use it only when nobody is at the keyboard (tlive mode full goes back). Also settable from IM: /mode (a bare /mode replies with the ladder). The daemon auto-starts with new sessions (disable via daemon.autoStart: false).

Commands

• tlive setup — configure IM credentials + register the Claude/Codex plugins (hooks ride the Claude plugin; Codex needs none). --hooks-only re-registers plugins only; add --claude / --codex to pick a vendor.
• tlive status — daemon health, effective mode, channels, and the Codex companion state (running / degraded / off; degraded or off = Codex approvals local-only).
• tlive mode off|notify|full|all — set posture (see intro). Persisted to config, takes effect on the next hook; notify is the default, full = remote approval on, all = also holds sub-agent approvals.
• tlive run <cmd> — wrap a process: local terminal + live web terminal (QR to open).
• tlive url — print the dashboard link + QR code.
• tlive logs -f — follow the daemon log.
• tlive start / tlive stop — explicit lifecycle (start is rarely needed; sessions lazy-start the daemon unless autoStart is off).

Diagnostics

1. No IM messages: tlive status for channel config; tlive logs -f for send errors; confirm the daemon is up after starting a session.
2. Codex has no remote cards: check tlive status — the companion line must say running. off means codex isn't on PATH (or Windows); degraded means codex is there but nothing is answering on the app-server socket — see ~/.tlive/codex-appserver.log. Neither is permanent: tlive keeps checking, so installing or reinstalling codex recovers on its own with no tlive restart. Either way Codex still prompts locally; nothing is ever auto-run.
3. No approval card ever arrives: check tlive status — the mode: line must say full or all. The default notify never sends approval cards (tool prompts stay local); enable remote approval with tlive mode full.
4. Claude approval card unanswered (in full or all): the local dialog stays live the whole time (parallel channels, first answer wins); answering locally resolves the remote card as "answered in terminal". The remote window defaults to ~24h (approvals.windowSec, shared by both vendors).
5. Web page unreachable: tlive url for the current link (token is in the URL); phones need the same LAN (or your own reverse proxy/VPN — tlive has no publicUrl config, and cards never carry the link).

Security model in one breath

• Never auto-allow: unanswered → Claude's local dialog governs / Codex's native prompt governs. Deny always carries a reason.
• Read-only tools (Read/Glob/Grep) pass by default. /safe on also auto-allows routine ops (non-dangerous Bash, non-sensitive edits) — the danger floor (rm -rf, sudo, .env/.ssh writes…) still asks and no config can lower it. /trust on pauses approvals entirely (high risk — pair with allowedSenders).
• Runtime switches flip the same state from either entrance: IM commands (/mute /trust /safe on|off, /mode for the posture ladder) and the CLI (tlive mute|trust|safe on|off, tlive mode off|notify|full|all). /mute on = go quiet; it silences IM notifications ONLY. The desktop toast is independent of /mute and has no on/off switch of its own: one fires per thing that starts waiting on you (a pending approval, or the idle "waiting for your input" nudge), named with its project and call, and tlive never touches it again — it ages into the notification centre like any other app's, a log rather than live status (the dashboard is the live view). Silence it with your OS's Do Not Disturb, or tlive mode off to stop tlive entirely. A finished turn notifies the desktop too, from the Stop hook and after the same grace as the IM card; a failed tool does not, it blocks nobody.
• Vendor-side permissions.deny always wins; tlive never overrides it.

First-time onboarding

When the user says "help me set up tlive" (or runs /tlive:setup), walk them through:

1. tlive status to check the engine; missing → npm i -g tlive.
2. No channels → collect Telegram (bot token + chat id) or Feishu (appId + appSecret) credentials and merge into ~/.tlive/config.json: { "allowedSenders": [], "adapters": { "telegram": { "token": "…", "chatIdAllowList": ["…"] }, "feishu": { "appId": "…", "appSecret": "…" } } }
3. tlive start → tlive status to verify channels; tlive url for the dashboard.
4. Offer remote approval: tlive defaults to notify (watch + notify only). If the user wants to Allow/Deny tool calls from their phone, run tlive mode full (holds each tool call for a remote answer; reversible with tlive mode notify). Leave it in notify if they only want monitoring. If they say they're stepping away and want sub-agent approvals on their phone too, that's tlive mode all — flag the trade plainly: a held sub-agent has no terminal dialog until the window ends, so it only pays off when nobody is at the keyboard (tlive mode full to come back).
5. Codex needs no extra step — the companion connects as soon as an app-server is answering, and tlive starts one if none is. If status says off/degraded, that's diagnostic info, not a setup task, and it clears itself once codex is installed — don't tell them to restart tlive.