Quickstart

This walks through your first live switch, from Codex to Claude Code and back.

1. Check your setup

constant doctor
constant status

doctor confirms the agent CLIs and session stores are present. status shows runtime readiness, your latest sessions, and the current trail.

2. Host an agent

constant host codex

You are now in a normal Codex session, running inside Constant. Talk to it as usual. Everything looks and behaves like Codex, because it is Codex — plus a one-row status bar on the bottom line showing the runtime, the conversation, and the prefix keys.

3. Switch the runtime

The default prefix is Ctrl-B. Press Ctrl-B, release, then c:

Ctrl-B c

Codex stops and Claude Code resumes the same conversation, in the same directory. Your next message continues the thread; you do not re-explain anything. The carry receipt is held in the status bar for a few seconds:

 ✓ ch01 → claude · shipshape parser · carried 4 turns

Press Ctrl-B then x to hand it back to Codex, or Ctrl-B then o for OpenCode. See Keybindings for the full set.

4. See what Constant did

Press Ctrl-B then t for the trail graph — every chapter of the conversation, live. Or from the command line afterwards:

constant trail
constant snapshots

trail shows the conversation's chapters and projections for this directory, under its name and handle. snapshots lists the record volumes each carry wrote.

5. Come back later

constant resume            # newest conversation here
constant resume cobalt-37  # or by handle, from anywhere

Already inside tmux?

Ctrl-B is also tmux's prefix. Pick another one:

constant host codex --prefix C-t
CONSTANT_PREFIX=C-t constant host codex

Next: Hosting a runtime.