shelbi reload

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shelbi reload [OPTIONS] [TARGET] [NAME]

shelbi reload is the "I just rebuilt the binary, pick up the new code" command. It respawns the Shelbi-owned panes in place (the sidebar, the hidden tasks / review / machines panes, and the orchestrator pane) so a new binary takes effect and edits to the orchestrator's instructions or the shared preamble land without tearing down your tmux session.

The orchestrator's context survives the respawn. Before the old pane is replaced, it's asked to write agents/orchestrator/handoff.md covering its in-flight state; the new instance ingests that file (then deletes it) and resumes mid-thought rather than cold. A missing or timed-out handoff degrades to a cold start, never fatal.

The workspace panes are left alone: they re-shell into shelbi on every call and pick up the new binary on their next invocation, so there's nothing to restart there.

Use it any time scripts/install.sh (or your own build) has produced a new binary and you want the long-lived TUI surfaces to start using it.

Targets

Pass a target to reload just one part in place without bouncing the whole hub (and, for chat, without losing the orchestrator's context). A targeted reload respawns only the named pane and leaves every other pane and its state untouched. Most targets skip the whole-hub self-heal below. chat first self-heals the agent automation that it is about to redeploy.

Target	Reloads
`chat`	The orchestrator chat pane. Carries the handoff forward exactly like the whole-hub reload, so the reloaded orchestrator keeps its mid-thought context instead of starting cold.
`tasks`	The tasks / kanban pane.
`activity`	The activity / events-feed pane.
`sidebar`	The workspace-roster sidebar pane.
`workspace <name>`	A single worker's pane. Local workers respawn with `--resume` so the agent keeps its conversation and its task wiring (`TASK_ID`, hub socket) is preserved. A missing or unknown name is a clear error.
omitted, or `all`	The whole-hub reload described above (the default).

# Get the tasks pane back without touching the orchestrator's context.
shelbi reload tasks
 
# Respawn just the orchestrator, carrying its handoff forward.
shelbi reload chat
 
# Bounce one stuck worker pane.
shelbi reload workspace alpha

An unknown target, or a bare workspace with no name, errors with the valid set so you can self-correct.

shelbi reload also sweeps any stray .shelbi/project marker files. Project resolution reverse-looks-up against the registered project YAMLs, so these markers are redundant.

Reload also self-heals the shipped agent workspaces before respawning the orchestrator pane. User-customized agents/*/instructions.md files are preserved. In agents/orchestrator/instructions.md and zenmode.md, Shelbi upgrades only exact stock pr-create, ci-watch, and pr-merge command snippets to carry the probe's repository, base, and head identity, while leaving surrounding custom prose intact. Both unpinned and head-only stock forms are upgraded. It also appends any missing runner-critical orchestrator sections, such as Polling-only event drain, instead of overwriting the whole file. Both a whole-hub reload and shelbi reload chat apply these automation safeguards before the new orchestrator starts.

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Description
`-p, --project <PROJECT>`	string	env / cwd lookup	Project to operate on.

Examples

Rebuild, install, and reload the TUI in one shot:

./scripts/install.sh && shelbi reload

Reload a specific project's panes from outside that project's directory:

shelbi reload --project shelbi

Targets

Flags

Examples

See also