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Common Use Cases (Recipes)

This page is intentionally practical: copy-paste commands, expected artifacts, and “what to do next”.

Pick the right mode

  • rexos agent run: one-off tasks inside a workspace sandbox (you review/commit the changes).
  • rexos harness init/run: long tasks with verification + checkpoints (recommended for “keep iterating until X passes”).
  • rexos daemon start: minimal HTTP daemon (currently only /healthz) for integration/readiness checks.

1) Fix a failing test suite with harness checkpoints

Goal: keep making changes until your verifier passes (tests, lint, build, smoke checks), while staying rollback-friendly.

Steps

1) In the repo you want to fix (recommended), initialize the harness:

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cd /path/to/your/repo
rexos harness init . --prompt "Create a features checklist for: all tests passing, lint clean, and basic smoke check"

2) Customize the init script to reflect your verifier (tests/build/lint).

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./init.sh

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.\init.ps1

3) Run incremental loops until it passes:

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rexos harness run . --prompt "Continue. Focus on the next failing verifier output."

What to expect

  • Harness creates/uses durable artifacts in the workspace:
  • features.json (checklist)
  • rexos-progress.md (append-only progress log)
  • init.sh + init.ps1 (your verifier scripts)
  • When your verifier passes, RexOS makes a checkpoint git commit.

Rollback-friendly

If a checkpoint is bad, use git normally (e.g. git reset --hard HEAD~1) and run rexos harness run again.

2) Mechanical edits across a repo (safe workspace sandbox)

Use agent run when you want a targeted change and prefer manual review/commit.

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cd /path/to/repo
rexos agent run --workspace . --prompt "Rename Foo to Bar across the codebase. Update imports and keep tests passing."

Good prompts for this pattern:

  • “Apply this change across all files and run the formatter.”
  • “Update deprecated API calls and add a small regression test.”
  • “Migrate config format and keep backwards compatibility.”

3) Route planning locally (Ollama) and coding to a stronger model

This is a common workflow:

  • planning: small/local (cheap, fast)
  • coding: stronger cloud model
  • summary: cheap summarizer

Example routing:

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[router.planning]
provider = "ollama"
model = "default"

[router.coding]
provider = "glm_native" # or minimax_native / deepseek / kimi / qwen_native ...
model = "default"

[router.summary]
provider = "ollama"
model = "default"

See how-to/providers.md for full provider examples (GLM/MiniMax native + NVIDIA NIM included).

4) Long refactors with checkpoints (keep scope small per run)

Instead of “big bang refactor”, do multiple harness runs, each with a narrow goal:

1) isolate a module 2) update imports 3) fix compilation 4) fix unit tests 5) run the verifier scripts

This keeps diffs reviewable and failures easy to diagnose.

5) Share reproducible “agent tasks”

If you commit the harness artifacts (features.json, rexos-progress.md, init scripts), others can reproduce the same long-task loop (and extend it) without re-inventing the harness.

6) Daemon mode for readiness checks (experimental)

The daemon currently exposes a simple health endpoint:

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rexos daemon start --addr 127.0.0.1:8787
curl http://127.0.0.1:8787/healthz

Use it for container readiness / supervision, and keep the rest of RexOS logic in the CLI for now.

Validate tool-calling + harness flow with Ollama first, then switch routing to bigger models once the loop is stable.

8) Browser automation (Playwright bridge)

Use browser tools when you need to interact with dynamic pages (JS-rendered content, clicking, typing, screenshots).

See also: Browser Automation (Playwright).

Prerequisites

Install Playwright (Python):

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python3 -m pip install playwright
python3 -m playwright install chromium

Example: open a page, summarize, save artifacts

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rexos agent run --workspace . --prompt "Use browser tools to open https://example.com, read the page, write a short summary to notes/example.md, and save a screenshot to .rexos/browser/example.png."

Notes:

  • browser_navigate is SSRF-checked by default (set allow_private=true only for local/private targets).
  • Screenshots write to workspace-relative paths (no absolute paths, no .., no symlink escapes).