AnvilHub vs the terminal
Doing it in AnvilHub
Everything you do in the terminal has a place in AnvilHub. Here's the map — command to screen — and why the graphical way is worth it.
Anvil's terminal and AnvilHub aren't two different products — they're two doors onto the same running Anvil. Almost everything you type as a command has a screen on the web that does the same thing, reading live from the host and writing back to it. This page is the map.
Why bother with the graphical way? Two reasons. First, some things are simply easier to see than to read scrolling past — a cost breakdown, a routine's schedule, what every bot is doing right now. Second, and more importantly, a few things only make sense once more than one person or more than one machine is involved, and those live on the web by nature: a fleet, a team, durable approvals, a shared knowledge base. The terminal is where you work; AnvilHub is where you oversee.
The work surfaces
AnvilHub's left rail puts your main work surfaces up top. Each one is a view onto a real session on a real machine — not a copy.
| AnvilHub surface | What it is | In the terminal |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | A conversation with your Anvil, read-only — it talks and plans but won't change files. | anvil at read-only; /session |
| Coding | Chat's twin, but allowed to act: it frames the live viewer (terminal, files, git, diffs). Same session as Chat — you promote it in place. | the anvil REPL / the viewer |
| Canvas | The artifact shelf — the things your crew produced, kept where you can find them. | — (an output surface) |
| Compose | A studio for building and previewing an artifact live. | artifact building |
| Console | SSH, in your browser — tabbed sessions relayed through the host. The host opens the connection and holds the key; AnvilHub only relays the bytes. | /ssh, ssh |
Everything else, command → screen
| You'd type… | …and on AnvilHub it's | Why the screen helps |
|---|---|---|
/history, /runs, /audit | Runs | Every run with its bot, origin, duration, changeset, artifacts, approvals, tokens and cost — grouped by bot, day, or routine, with CSV export. |
/schedule, /routine | Cycle | Each routine's schedule, ceiling, which bot runs it, when it next fires, and how the last run went. |
/bot, /team | Team | The bot board: who's on the team, their role, squad, model and ceiling, and what each is doing right now. |
anvil pair, /fleet | Instances | Every machine, which one the workspace is pointed at, rename, lead agent, revoke. |
/library | Library | The org's documents — scanned, indexed, searchable with citations — held on the Anvil, never on the hub. |
/memory show | Memory | What the Anvil has learned, in tiers, laid out to read. (Editing memory is terminal-only for now.) |
/scope, approvals | Inbox | Approvals and security records queued for a human — an "actionable" badge means someone's blocked on you. |
/hub, /publish | Publish | Create, edit and publish marketplace packages; choose a private draft or a public listing. |
/chain | Chains | Your skill-chain manifests. |
/orgs | Workspaces | Orgs end to end — invite, re-role, suspend, seat limits, hand over ownership. Web-only. |
Settings — the two scopes
Settings on AnvilHub open as a panel (deep-linkable at #settings), split into two scopes:
Account — things about you: your profile and workspaces (Account), theme and density (Appearance), your read-aloud voice (Voice), and your password, passkeys, API tokens and chat devices (Security).
This Anvil — things about the machine you're pointed at, read live over the connection and enforced on the host:
| Pane | Covers | In the terminal |
|---|---|---|
| Configuration | Default model, reasoning effort, routing rules, permission mode, network egress allow-list, budget, telemetry. The pane renders whatever the host's settings registry describes, so a new setting shows up here with no change to the web. | /config, /configure |
| Providers | Per-provider cards — OAuth sign-in, API key (sent once, stored machine-bound, never shown again), local servers, search engines. | /provider, /login |
| Connection | The door chooser (AnvilHub / local / off), pairing, and remembered devices. | /relay, /local-control |
| Consult | Who sits on the /consult multi-model panel. | /consult |
| News sources | Your news outlets, with region, language and leaning cross-checks. | /news |
| Spend | Cost, usage, tokens and billing for the selected machine. | /cost, /budget |
[!NOTE] Settings in the This Anvil scope are role-aware. Anyone attached can see the values; owners and admins can change most of them; a value fixed by an org policy or the environment shows as locked, with the reason.
The rule underneath all of it
Whatever you change on the web, the host is what enforces it. A config edit, a new key, a paused bot — AnvilHub files it as an instruction, and the daemon applies it the next time it checks in. That's why an edit you make while a machine is asleep still takes effect when it wakes: AnvilHub held the instruction; the host did the work.
Where to next
- Local vs AnvilHub — the doors, and how to pair.
- Instances & the fleet — many machines as one.
- Command reference — every command, in full.