Omp Intercom

Direct 1:1 messaging between omp sessions on the same machine. Send context, findings, or requests from one session to another — whether you're driving the conversation or letting agents coordinate.

Port of pi-intercom to the omp extension API.

User flow: press Alt+I or run /intercom to pick a session and send a message

Why

Sometimes you're running multiple omp sessions — one researching, one executing, one reviewing. Omp-intercom lets you:

• User-driven orchestration — Send context or findings from your research session to your execution session
• Agent collaboration — An agent can reach out to another session when it needs help or wants to share results
• Session awareness — See what other omp sessions are running and their current status

This fills the gap omp's built-ins leave open: /collab shares one session with multiple viewers (1 agent, N humans), and the Agent Hub manages subagents inside one process. Omp-intercom connects two independent, fully separate omp instances as peers.

In One Minute

Each omp session that has omp-intercom loaded and enabled connects to a tiny local broker over a local IPC transport. The broker keeps track of connected sessions and routes direct messages to the one you target by name or session ID. The extension gives you both a tool (intercom) and a small overlay UI (/intercom or Alt+I). Incoming messages are rendered inline inside the recipient session, can trigger a turn immediately by default, and are also stored in session history as extension entries. If you want a stricter local trust posture, inboundTrigger can reduce or disable auto-triggering.

Install

omp install npm:omp-intercom

Then restart omp. The extension auto-connects to the broker on startup and registers the bundled omp-intercom skill for common coordination patterns.

The broker process is spawned on demand and runs TypeScript through the bundled tsx CLI, so a Node.js executable must be available on PATH (or set brokerCommand/brokerArgs in the config, e.g. to bun).

Recommended: Add this snippet to your project's AGENTS.md to help agents understand when to coordinate across sessions:

<omp-intercom>
Coordinate with other local omp sessions on related codebases. Use `/skill:omp-intercom` for patterns.

**When:** Same codebase (parallel work), reference codebase (consulting patterns), related repos (shared libraries).

**Not when:** Unrelated codebases, trivial questions, or when you can proceed independently.

**Principle:** Prefer `send` for notifications; `ask` only when blocked waiting for input.
</omp-intercom>

A session becomes intercom-connected when all of these are true:

• the omp-intercom extension is installed and loaded in that session
• enabled is not set to false in the intercom config file, which defaults to ~/.omp/agent/intercom/config.json
• the session has started or reloaded after the extension was installed
• the local broker is running or can be auto-started

The session list only shows intercom-connected sessions, not every open omp process on the machine.

If a session is unnamed, omp-intercom exposes a collision-resistant runtime-only fallback alias like omp-chat-1a2b3c4d-5e6f-7a8b so other connected sessions can target it. That alias is not persisted as the omp session title or treated as a reconnect identity, so an unnamed process cannot inherit another unnamed session's queued mail after a restart.

Name your current session

Use /alias <name> as an omp-intercom-friendly way to name the current session:

/alias api-worker

The alias is omp's session name, so it is persisted in the session and immediately published to omp-intercom peers. Session lists, send/reply results, overlays, and incoming message headers use it when available. In an interactive UI, /alias or /alias menu opens an input for the current session's alias; it does not rename other sessions. Use /alias <name> in non-UI modes.

Quick Start

From the Keyboard

Press Alt+I or type /intercom to open the session list overlay:

1. Select a session — Use arrow keys to pick a target session
2. Compose message — Write your message in the compose overlay
3. Send — Press Enter to send, Escape to cancel

(Alt+M in pi-intercom is reserved by omp, so the shortcut moved to Alt+I.)

From the Agent

The agent can list sessions and send messages using the intercom tool. Tool calls and results render as compact transcript rows so send/ask/reply flows are easy to scan. Use /intercom-id to insert a handoff snippet for the current session's stable intercom target into the editor. For common patterns like planner-worker delegation, the bundled omp-intercom skill provides copy-paste ready examples:

// List active sessions
intercom({ action: "list" })
// → **Current session:**
// → • executor (20d43841) — ~/projects/api (kimi-k2 · 42% ctx) [self, idle]
// → **Other sessions:**
// → • research (6332faab) — ~/projects/api (kimi-k2) [same cwd, thinking]

// List only peers in the same working directory
intercom({ action: "list-cwd" })

// Send a message
intercom({ action: "send", to: "research", message: "Check if UserService.validate() handles null" })
// → Message sent to research

// Check connection status
intercom({ action: "status" })
// → Connected: Yes, Session ID: abc123, Active sessions: 3

// Send with attachments (code snippets, files, or context)
intercom({
  action: "send",
  to: "worker",
  message: "Here's the fix:",
  attachments: [{
    type: "snippet",
    name: "auth.ts",
    language: "typescript",
    content: "function validate() { ... }"
  }]
})

Ask and wait for a reply

ask blocks until the target replies (10-minute default, configurable via PI_INTERCOM_ASK_TIMEOUT_MS):

intercom({ action: "ask", to: "planner", message: "JWT or session cookies?" })
// → **Reply from planner:** Session cookies — we're browser-first.

Reply to an inbound ask naturally with reply:

intercom({ action: "reply", message: "Session cookies — we're browser-first." })

Target by working directory

Scope a send/ask to the sole live session in another repo:

intercom({
  action: "send",
  cwd: "/home/me/projects/billing",
  message: "Let's discuss the billing retry design in this repo."
})

Configuration

Create ~/.omp/agent/intercom/config.json:

{
  "enabled": true,
  "confirmSend": false,
  "inboundTrigger": "always",
  "sessionId": "stable-intercom-id"
}

Key	Default	Meaning
enabled	true	Set false to disconnect and hide intercom
confirmSend	false	Interactive confirmation before send
inboundTrigger	"always"	"always" triggers a turn on inbound messages; "replies" only triggers for ask replies; "never" renders inline without triggering
sessionId	unset	Pin a restart-stable intercom session ID

By default, runtime state and config live under ~/.omp/agent/intercom. If omp is launched with PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR (omp's own agent-dir override), omp-intercom uses $PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR/intercom instead, including config.json, broker PID/lock files, sockets, and launcher state.

Runtime Files

Runtime files live at ~/.omp/agent/intercom/ by default, or $PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR/intercom/ when PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR is set:

• broker.sock — Unix domain socket for communication (macOS/Linux only; Windows uses a named pipe instead)
• broker-launch.vbs — Windows helper script used to launch the broker without a console window
• broker.pid — Broker process ID
• broker.spawn.lock — Startup lock preventing double-spawn
• pending-asks/ — Local records of blocking asks awaiting replies

How It Works

┌─────────────┐         ┌──────────────┐         ┌─────────────┐
│ omp session │◄───────►│    broker    │◄───────►│ omp session │
│  (planner)  │  local  │ (auto-spawn) │  local  │  (worker)   │
└─────────────┘   IPC   └──────────────┘   IPC   └─────────────┘

• Broker — Tiny local process (broker/broker.ts) that tracks connected sessions and routes direct messages. Auto-spawns on first use; exits when idle.
• Extension — Each session runs index.ts, which registers the intercom tool, the /intercom, /intercom-id, /alias commands, the Alt+I shortcut, presence heartbeats, and the inline message renderer.
• Transport — Unix domain socket on macOS/Linux; named pipe on Windows (opt-in TCP loopback via PI_INTERCOM_TRANSPORT=tcp for restricted environments). Session IDs are the trusted addressing key; duplicate names fail closed on ambiguous sends.
• Presence — Sessions advertise name, cwd, model, context-window usage, and live status (idle / thinking / tool:<name>) so peers can pick a good target.
• Mailbox — Messages to recently disconnected named sessions are queued and redelivered when the same name+cwd reconnects. Runtime-only omp-chat-... aliases are not reconnect identities.

Extension Channels

Other extensions in the same session can use omp-intercom as a message bus: register a namespace over the shared pi.events bus, get an owner-elected channel with per-namespace state, and publish/send payloads to the owning session. See extension-api.ts for the INTERCOM_EXTENSION_REGISTER_EVENT contract and the outbox request/result events for consent-gated sends.

Differences from pi-intercom

• Targets the omp extension API (@oh-my-pi/* packages, omp package manifest)
• Shortcut is Alt+I (omp reserves Alt+M)
• Runtime state lives under ~/.omp/agent/intercom
• Model presence refreshes at turn_start (omp has no model_select event)
• The pi-subagents bridge (contact_supervisor, subagent relay events) and the Herdr openProjectPaneIfMissing flow are not ported; omp's subagents communicate through the built-in Agent Hub instead
• Tests run on bun test

Development

npm install
npm test    # bun test, 190 tests

The broker is runtime-agnostic (plain Node APIs); the extension and UI layers import @oh-my-pi/* packages and require Bun.

License

MIT