talk-to

/talk-to - Agent Messaging

Send messages to agents via Oracle threads. Each agent has a persistent channel thread.

Messaging consolidation (2026-07-06): /hey, /contacts, /mailbox, and /inbox were archived to the zombie tier — this skill is the one messaging verb now. For real-time tmux pings use maw hey directly (or --maw here). Archived skills remain installable via arra install -s <name>.

Usage

/talk-to arthur "What's your status?"          # one-shot message
/talk-to arthur --new "Hey, starting fresh"    # skip lookup, create new thread
/talk-to arthur loop ask about their work      # autonomous conversation
/talk-to #42 "follow up on this"               # post to thread by ID
/talk-to --list                                # show channels
/talk-to arthur --maw "quick ping"             # force maw transport (real-time tmux)
/talk-to arthur --thread "async question"      # force MCP thread transport
/talk-to arthur --inbox "offline message"      # force inbox transport (file write)

Mode 0: No arguments

If ARGUMENTS is empty, show usage help then run --list.

Step 0: Contacts Lookup

Always read contacts first. This is the source of truth for agent routing.

date "+🕐 %H:%M %Z (%A %d %B %Y)"
CONTACTS="$(pwd)/ψ/contacts.json"
if [ ! -f "$CONTACTS" ]; then
  # Fallback path
  CONTACTS="$(pwd)/.oracle/contacts.json"
fi

if [ -f "$CONTACTS" ]; then
  MAW=$(jq -r ".contacts.\"$AGENT\".maw // empty" "$CONTACTS")
  INBOX=$(jq -r ".contacts.\"$AGENT\".inbox // empty" "$CONTACTS")
  THREAD=$(jq -r ".contacts.\"$AGENT\".thread // empty" "$CONTACTS")
  REPO=$(jq -r ".contacts.\"$AGENT\".repo // empty" "$CONTACTS")
  NOTES=$(jq -r ".contacts.\"$AGENT\".notes // empty" "$CONTACTS")
  FOUND_IN_CONTACTS=true
else
  FOUND_IN_CONTACTS=false
fi

If agent not found in contacts AND not found in maw ls:

I don't know "{agent}".

  /contacts add {agent}    — register transport info
  /talk-to {agent} --thread "message"  — try MCP thread anyway