Everything you might ask Claude, Codex or Gemini to do in Argus, in one table: what it does by itself, what it does after you tap Do it, and what it cannot do — with why, and what to do instead. It assumes the Argus plugin (or argus-mcp, or argus-say from a shell): the tools named here are what the agent uses.

✅ by itself — the agent's key allows it. 👆 with your OK — the agent requests it; you get the question with Do it / No — a bell (on the phone too), and a card in the bottom-right corner, on every screen, that stays until you answer; on Do it Argus does it, through the same checks as when you do it. Nothing happens before your tap: a team asked for in a desk is started — and its desk made — only on Do it. ❌ no — not through Argus, on purpose.

Settings → Agents has a box for every action an agent can request. Ticked, it is done on request straight away — you still get the bell saying it was done; unticked, you get Do it / No first. Any of them can be ticked, the risky ones too (marked risky: they delete files, end work or let agents loose) — so a team can be started or restarted by an agent with nobody at the screen. A team whose agents ask nobody (everything) also needs Start an agent with no questions at all ticked. The boxes are kept on the machine, in the preferences, which an agent's key can read but never write: no agent can tick one for itself.

The same, in ~/.config/argus/config.yaml (added to what is ticked):

agents_without_asking: [team_pause, team_go, todo_delete]

The list of what can be requested is GET /api/agent/actions, and the request tool's own list of actions; from a shell, argus-say request <action> key=value….

sequenceDiagram
  participant You
  participant A as the agent
  participant Argus
  You->>A: "start the team Kraken paper in the desk Trading"
  A->>Argus: request start_team {team, desk}
  Argus->>Argus: finds the team, its folder and goal, an agent per step
  Argus-->>You: "claude-1 asks to start the team Kraken paper in … — Do it / No"
  You->>Argus: Do it
  Argus->>Argus: the desk, then POST /api/teams with the full key
  Argus-->>You: the team's window and its agents', in Trading
  Argus-->>A: done

Something that cannot be done as asked — a team that does not exist, no goal, a check with no command — is refused before you are asked, with the reason, so the agent can fix it.