The agent is halfway through a twenty-file refactor and you need one simple thing: the name of the function it renamed at the start. A normal message waits in the queue and becomes part of the conversation. The Verboo Code /btw command fixes that: you ask right away, get the answer in a separate panel, and the main agent keeps working without ever knowing you asked.
What does /btw do in Verboo Code?
It answers a side question using the current conversation as context, without interrupting the main agent. The answer comes from a separate instance that reads the same conversation, replies once and goes away.
/btw which function did you rename in the first file, and what was its old name?In the source code the command is flagged as immediate: it runs without waiting for the agent to reach a stop point and bypasses the message queue. The screen shows /btw followed by your question, then Answering..., then the answer.
How do you use /btw step by step?
Type /btw, a space and the question. You don't need to wait for the agent to finish.
- Type
/btwfollowed by the question and press Enter. - Wait for
Answering...to turn into the answer. The main agent keeps running meanwhile. - If the answer is long, scroll with the up and down arrows, or with
Ctrl+PandCtrl+N. Each press scrolls 3 lines. - Dismiss with
Esc,EnterorSpace.Ctrl+CandCtrl+Dalso close it.
If you type just /btw with no question, the CLI replies with the correct usage:
Usage: /btw <your question>What can /btw see, and what can't it see?
It sees the conversation. It does not see the disk. Every tool is blocked for side questions, so it can't read a new file, run a command or search anything. It only knows what has already gone through the conversation.
| Item | Does /btw see it? | Detail from the code |
|---|---|---|
| Main conversation messages | Yes | Only those after the last /compact |
| Files the agent already read this session | Yes | Their content is in the conversation as tool results |
System prompt and AGENTS.md | Yes | Reuses the session's own system prompt |
| The reply the agent is writing right now | No | The in-progress message is stripped before the question |
| A file nobody has opened yet | No | Tools denied with Side questions cannot use tools |
| A follow-up question | No | Capped at 1 turn. For another question, run another /btw |
Gotcha: after a
/compact,/btwonly sees the summary, not the original messages. If you ask about a detail that didn't make it into the summary, the answer will be "I don't know". That is expected: the instruction built into the command tells the model to say it doesn't know instead of promising to look it up.
Does the /btw answer go into the conversation?
No. When you dismiss the panel the answer is discarded, and the main agent never sees the question or the answer. That keeps one-off doubts out of the context. If the answer revealed something the agent needs to know (say, it renamed the wrong function), send it as a normal message.
When should you use /btw, and when something else?
Use /btw for a quick question about what is already in the conversation. For everything else there is a better command.
| Situation | Use |
|---|---|
| Quick doubt about what the agent already did, without stopping the work | /btw |
| A question that needs reading a file, running a test or searching the code | A normal chat message |
| Trying a different approach without losing the current conversation | /branch |
| Seeing what is filling the context | /context |
| Checking what changed in the files | /diff |
Which error messages can /btw show?
There are three, all inside the panel itself, and none of them affects the main agent.
| Message | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
No response received | The model returned no text | Dismiss and ask again |
(The model tried to call ... instead of answering directly. Try rephrasing or ask in the main conversation.) | The question asked for an action and the model tried to use a tool | Rephrase it as a question, or send it in the main chat |
(API error: ...) | The call failed after retries | Read the error and try again |
Does /btw use tokens?
Yes. The side question sends the whole conversation as context, but it reuses the main conversation's prompt cache, which makes the answer faster. The code also skips writing a new cache entry, since no future request will repeat that ending.
Every /btw carries the whole conversation with it, so in a long session a short question isn't cheap. On Verboo Code tokens are unlimited: ask as often as you like while the agent works, without doing the math. Create your account at verboo.ai, open the CLI and run /btw on your next long task.
