vtmate

How to use it

Debate mode

Two agents talk to each other starting from one initial subject. You can join in and redirect the debate at any point by speaking - it works the same as interrupting a single agent in conversation mode (see Configure Agents to customize your agent to your needs).

Debate mode diagram

Starting a debate from the CLI

Start with an initial subject (forcing PTT mode)

vtmate --debate "God" "Devil" "How to succeed in life?" --ptt true

Start with an initial prompt from a file (forcing LIVE mode)

vtmate --debate "God" "Devil" -i myprompt.txt --ptt false

Start with an initial prompt piped from another command

cat "Lets discuss the permissions of this file: \n\n $(ls -la)" > prompt.txt
vtmate --debate "Unix administrator" "Security Expert" -i prompt.txt --ptt true

The initial subject and an initial prompt from -p/-i are the same thing: whichever one you give becomes turn 0. Give only one - a trailing <subject> together with -p/-i is rejected, since both would be trying to set the same message.

A running debate between two agents in vtmate's terminal

Ending a debate automatically

Add --max-turns <N> to end the program by itself after N turns, where one agent reply counts as one turn. The debate stops after that reply is spoken and saved, so nothing is cut mid-sentence.

End after 10 turns and save the session as an HTML player

vtmate --debate "God" "Devil" "How to succeed in life?" --ptt true --max-turns 10 --s-html

See Saving sessions for the full -s / -s-html reference.

Starting or stopping a debate from conversation mode

Press Control+D at any time to open a popup that picks the two debate agents, with a text field for the initial subject (the same role as the trailing <subject> argument above) - leave it blank to provide the topic by voice instead. The popup also has its own "Max turns" field, blank for no limit or 2 up to a very large number, prefilled with whatever limit is already in effect - but reaching that limit there switches back to conversation mode instead of exiting the program, so you can keep going and start a new debate with Control+D right away.

Start debate diagram

While debating

  • In LIVE mode just talk; you can also pause/resume recording by pressing SPACE once.
  • In PTT mode: keep SPACE pushed while talking, then release.
  • Press ESCAPE once during a mid-response to cancel it and pause the debate - speak again to continue.
  • Press ESCAPE twice for resetting the session.
  • Press double u to undo the last response.
  • Press Control+D to stop the debate and go back to conversation mode

It's a good idea to set --ptt <true/false> explicitly in debate mode, so PTT doesn't flip per agent turn depending on each agent's own ptt setting - see PTT / Live modes for the full explanation of that flag.

Stop debate

You can stop the debate and go back to conversation mode by pressing Control+D.