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).

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.

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

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