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Nova Terminal

Nova Terminal gives you a terminal-native chat workflow for platform engineering with astroctl.

It is designed for real operator loops: inspect, ask, decide, apply, and resume.

First 60 Seconds​

# 1) start
astroctl nova

# 2) if needed, authenticate in-chat
/auth

# 3) ask and iterate
help me debug CrashLoopBackOff in payments namespace

Start Chat​

astroctl nova

Resume Conversations​

Continue the most recent session:

astroctl nova --continue

Resume a specific session:

astroctl nova --resume <session-id>

Browse and pick a session interactively:

astroctl nova --resume
note

--continue and --resume are mutually exclusive.

Command Cheat Sheet​

  • /help toggles command and shortcut help.
  • /auth opens sign-in methods.
  • /resume opens recent session picker.
  • /statusline toggles footer density (compact/full) and supports explicit modes.
  • /clear clears the conversation and starts fresh.
  • /exit quits the session (and shows how to resume).

Keyboard Shortcuts​

  • Cmd+V (macOS) / Ctrl+V (Linux/Windows): paste text.
  • Tab: autocomplete slash commands.
  • ↑/↓: navigate input history.
  • Esc: clear input, close pickers, or cancel active stream.
  • Ctrl+D: exit when input is empty.
  • Cmd+Click (macOS) / Ctrl+Click (Linux/Windows): open links.

Paste and Input Behavior​

When you paste large multiline content, Nova tokenizes the input so the prompt stays readable:

[Pasted text #1 +54 lines]

When you press Enter, Nova expands that token back to the full pasted content before sending the request.

This keeps the input line compact while preserving full payload fidelity for the model.

Authentication in Terminal​

If you are not authenticated or your token expires, run:

/auth

Nova launches the login flow and then keeps your current conversation context.

You can also run:

/auth login

for direct login execution.

Incident Triage​

  1. Start Nova: astroctl nova.
  2. Paste logs/events from the failing service.
  3. Ask for root-cause hypotheses and a minimal verification sequence.
  4. Execute and iterate.

Change Planning​

  1. Resume prior work: astroctl nova --resume.
  2. Ask Nova for rollout and rollback steps.
  3. Ask for explicit command-by-command validation checks.

CLI Reference​

For full command flags and generated command docs, see: