Daily use

Start, stop, watch, and inspect Kairos during day-to-day operation.

Five top-level commands carry you through normal use.

Start

backant start                    # current workspace
backant start /path/to/repo      # explicit workspace

By default, Kairos paces itself between turns to keep costs in check. Three flags adjust:

Flag	Effect
--turbo	No pacing. High token usage; use for short focused bursts.
--fresh	Hard reset. Discards in-process judgment (.session/, .state/) so the next turn re-reads memory from disk. Memory itself, .backant.toml, and your lessons/learnings are preserved.
--pace	Auto-throttle. Stretches the pause between turns when Anthropic rate-limit utilization crosses 50% of any window; pauses outright above 95% until the window resets.

--pace is the recommended flag for long-lived deployments on a Max subscription. Keeps Kairos productive without burning your rate-limit headroom.

Stop

backant stop

Sends a graceful shutdown signal. The current turn finishes; nothing new starts. Memory and configuration are unaffected.

Watch

backant watch

Live event feed with a status bar. Each decision and action streams in real time. Exit with Ctrl+C — only detaches the viewer; does not stop Kairos.

This is the right thing to keep open in a side terminal while you work alongside it.

Status

backant status

One-shot snapshot. Exits cleanly. Suitable for scripting (CI checks, dashboards). Shows:

• Whether Kairos is active
• Workspace, latest activity, last outcome
• Subscription validity
• Recent memory growth
• Pending dream-bucket items

Authentication

backant login                    # browser auth flow
backant logout                   # clear stored credentials

Re-run login after a subscription renewal or account switch. Credentials persist across reboots under ~/.claude/kairos/.

Per-workspace vs. user-level state

Level	What lives here
Workspace (the repo)	.backant.toml (policy), .session/, .state/ (scratch). All committed or gitignored as appropriate.
User (~/.claude/kairos/)	Memory store, dream logs, eval reports, credentials, embedding-model cache. Shared across all workspaces you’ve connected.

Memory is intentionally user-level rather than per-workspace — observations about one codebase often inform decisions about another (e.g. “the team uses Zod everywhere”). If you want strict per-workspace isolation, override KAIROS_MEMORY_DB to a workspace-local path before starting.

Configuration reload

Editing .backant.toml while Kairos is active does not auto-reload the policy. Restart with --fresh to ensure the new policy takes effect immediately:

backant stop
backant start --fresh

See Configuration for the full .backant.toml schema.

Quick reference

backant                          # first-run setup OR resume in this workspace
backant login                    # auth
backant logout                   # de-auth
backant setup                    # re-scan, refresh skills
backant start [--turbo|--fresh|--pace]   # start Kairos
backant stop                     # stop Kairos
backant watch                    # live event feed
backant status                   # one-shot snapshot

backant memory <sub>             # see /kairos/memory
backant dream <sub>              # see /kairos/dream
backant eval <sub>               # see /kairos/eval

Pass --help on any subcommand for flags and arguments.