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Read an agent's changes

When an agent has been working, you want to know what it changed, all together, and whether it is right. The Changes pane lists every file it changed and what changed in each. The conversation shows each edit where it happened.

Before you start

  • An agent that has changed something. See the tutorials.

Steps

See everything it changed (Mac)

  1. Open the agent's conversation. If the sidebar on the right is closed, open it with the sidebar button at the top right of the window.
  2. Click Changes at the top of the sidebar (beside Files, Terminal, Browser, Exchanged and Background), or press Command-2. When the sidebar is narrow, the panes are shown as small pictures; hover over one for its name.

The files it changed are listed, grouped by folder, each with the lines added and removed (+12 −3). Until it changes something, the pane says Nothing changed yet. 3. Click a file. Its changes are shown with added and removed lines marked and the words that changed within a line highlighted. Unchanged stretches are folded into a line such as 14 unchanged lines; click it to open them. 4. Move between changes with the up and down arrows at the top (Previous change and Next change). The left arrow (All changed files) goes back to the list. 5. To read the change in context, switch from Edits to Whole file. The whole file is shown as it is now, with the changed lines marked. Open in Files opens it in the Files pane.

If the agent works in a folder it shares with you or other agents, a note at the top of the list says that it also shows what git sees changed there, which may include other work than this agent's. An agent in its own worktree has no such note; see Start an agent in its own worktree.

See each edit where it happened

  1. In the conversation, each edit the agent makes appears as it makes it, under the step that made it, with the lines before and after.
  2. Click Show in Changes under an edit to jump to it in the Changes pane, among everything else the agent changed.

Browse the folder (Mac)

Click Files in the sidebar to browse the agent's folder. Files the agent changed are marked. Click one to read it; code is shown with its syntax coloured, and pictures and Markdown are shown as they look.

Open a local page (Mac)

Click Browser in the sidebar, or press Command-4. Type a URL and press Return, or paste one. The pane is for local servers and documentation you want beside the conversation: it keeps its page and history per agent, and the agent cannot drive it. There are no tabs, bookmarks or downloads — use Safari for those.

On iPhone and iPad

  1. In the conversation, each edit is shown where it happened, as on the Mac.
  2. Open Files from the conversation to browse the agent's folder on the Mac and read a file.
  3. With a changed file open, tap What the agent did to see its edits in this conversation, newest first.

If it doesn't work

  • Nothing to show, saying the runtime hasn't reported any edits: some runtimes, such as Grok, do not say what they edit, and the folder is not one git can compare. Changes made by commands rather than edits cannot be shown either. Use the Terminal pane and git diff instead.
  • This file has changed since the agent's last edit, in ways it didn't report. Something else changed the file afterwards. Click See the whole file to read it as it is now.
  • A very large change says how many lines changed instead of drawing them. Click Show changes to draw it anyway.

See also