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Recipes

Worked, copy-pasteable patterns built on thurbox-cli and agents.toml — no glue code, no recompile.

Provision a monorepo #

A practical example for a monorepo with a production app — three roles, each with a different blast radius:

one or more operator sessions in worktrees with a custom MCP config — read/write access to the prod backoffice;
one or more developer sessions in worktrees with a custom MCP config — read-only access to the prod backoffice;
one or more security/quality reviewer sessions running continuous code review across the monorepo.

The "custom MCP config" is just an agent that launches claude with a different --mcp-config file — Thurbox stays agent-neutral. The whole thing is a single shell script over thurbox-cli plus three agents.toml entries.

The script #

    bash
    
  
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail
REPO="${REPO:-/home/me/code/monorepo}"   # path to the monorepo
N_OPERATORS="${N_OPERATORS:-1}"
N_DEVELOPERS="${N_DEVELOPERS:-2}"
N_REVIEWERS="${N_REVIEWERS:-1}"
HOST="${HOST:-}"                          # e.g. devbox to run remotely; empty = local
STAMP="$(date +%y%m%d-%H%M)"
cli() { thurbox-cli "$@"; }

host_flag() { [ -n "$HOST" ] && printf -- '--host\n%s\n' "$HOST"; }

# 1) Operator sessions — RW backoffice, each on its own worktree branch.
for i in $(seq 1 "$N_OPERATORS"); do
  cli session create \
    --name "operator-$i" \
    --repo-path "$REPO" \
    --agent operator \
    --worktree-branch "ops/$STAMP-$i" \
    $(host_flag)
done

# 2) Developer sessions — RO backoffice, each on its own worktree branch.
for i in $(seq 1 "$N_DEVELOPERS"); do
  cli session create \
    --name "developer-$i" \
    --repo-path "$REPO" \
    --agent developer \
    --worktree-branch "dev/$STAMP-$i" \
    $(host_flag)
done

# 3) Security/quality reviewer sessions — continuous review across the monorepo.
#    No worktree: review the repo as-is (read-only stance comes from the prompt).
for i in $(seq 1 "$N_REVIEWERS"); do
  id="$(cli session create \
        --name "reviewer-$i" \
        --repo-path "$REPO" \
        --agent reviewer \
        $(host_flag) \
        --json | jq -r '.id')"
  # Seed the reviewer with its standing instructions.
  cli session send --to "$id" --no-wake --body \
"You are a continuous security & code-quality reviewer for this monorepo.
Loop: pick the most recently changed files, review for security issues, correctness bugs,
and quality regressions. Report findings concisely, then move to the next changed area.
Do not modify code — review only."
done

cli session list

Agent definitions #

Each role is one [[agents]] entry pointing at its own MCP config. Anything in args is always passed, so bake in a model or any other default flags there. Drop this into ~/.config/thurbox/agents.toml :

    ~/.config/thurbox/agents.toml
    
  
default = "claude"

[[agents]]
name = "operator"                 # prod backoffice: read/write
command = "claude"
args = [
  "--mcp-config", "/home/me/.config/thurbox/mcp/backoffice-rw.json",
  "--model", "opus",              # bake any default flags into args
]
new_session_args = ["--session-id", "{id}"]
resume_args      = ["--resume", "{id}"]
fork_args        = ["--resume", "{id}", "--fork-session"]

[[agents]]
name = "developer"                # prod backoffice: read-only
command = "claude"
args = ["--mcp-config", "/home/me/.config/thurbox/mcp/backoffice-ro.json"]
new_session_args = ["--session-id", "{id}"]
resume_args      = ["--resume", "{id}"]
fork_args        = ["--resume", "{id}", "--fork-session"]

[[agents]]
name = "reviewer"                 # continuous code review, no backoffice access
command = "claude"
args = []
new_session_args = ["--session-id", "{id}"]
resume_args      = ["--resume", "{id}"]
fork_args        = ["--resume", "{id}", "--fork-session"]

MCP configs #

The read/write vs read-only split lives entirely in the two MCP config files those agents point at, under ~/.config/thurbox/mcp/ :

    ~/.config/thurbox/mcp/backoffice-rw.json
    
  
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "backoffice": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@yourco/backoffice-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "BACKOFFICE_URL": "https://prod-backoffice.internal",
        "BACKOFFICE_MODE": "rw"
      }
    }
  }
}

backoffice-ro.json is identical but with "BACKOFFICE_MODE": "ro" . The reviewer agent ships no MCP server at all, so it can never touch the backoffice.

Scale knobs #

Counts are env vars — N_DEVELOPERS=3 ./provision.sh spins up three developer sessions.
HOST=devbox ./provision.sh runs every session's worktree + tmux on a remote machine from hosts.toml .
Need one session to span several repos? Add --add-repo PATH@main (its own worktree per repo) or --add-dir PATH (attached read-only) to its session create .