erun whip

Push every live orchestrator and environment agent to keep moving, on demand, and report exactly who was pushed and who was skipped — and why.

Why this exists

The pacing nudge already runs automatically: the desktop re-states "keep going, don't stop" into an orchestrator's session once it has gone quiet for a while (see Periodic pacing re-statement). But that pass only ever runs on its own schedule, only ever reaches orchestrators, and reports nothing — an operator who suspects it isn't working has no way to check. erun whip is the manual, visible counterpart: one command that pushes the same nudge into everything it can reach right now, and prints what happened to each target.

Synopsis

erun whip [TENANT ENVIRONMENT] [flags]

What "live" means, and what disqualifies a target

Two populations, each disqualified for its own explicit reason rather than lumped into one generic failure:

• Environment agents. Each configured environment has its own AI session (the one erun open's AI tab reattaches to). whip calls that environment's own whip MCP tool. An environment nobody currently has open in the desktop has no reachable edge and is reported skipped — not alive: there is no live session there to push. One that already answered the maximum number of consecutive nudges without showing new activity is reported skipped — already-capped, and pushing it again does not restart the count — see Reply or restart below.
• Orchestrators. A persisted orchestrator's live session is a PTY held entirely inside the running desktop process — a separate erun invocation (this command) has no channel into it. Every configured orchestrator is therefore reported skipped — unreachable from this transport, always, regardless of whether it is actually running. Only the desktop itself — its own automatic pass, or the titlebar's whip button (see Desktop app overview) — can push an orchestrator; this is a structural limit of the CLI, not a bug.

Neither case is a hard command failure — erun whip exits 0 and reports every target's outcome. That report is the deliverable: naming who was pushed and who was skipped, and why, is what makes "it isn't working" a checkable claim instead of a feeling.

Explicit means explicit

Passing TENANT ENVIRONMENT (or omitting both to whip everything configured) pushes each live target immediately — it does not wait for that session to have gone quiet for a while first. Running whip is the operator asserting "push this now", the same assertion the desktop's own titlebar whip button makes when clicked. It never bypasses the per-target cap: a session already at its limit is still reported capped, not pushed a seventh time.

Reply or restart

A capped target has stopped answering after repeated nudges — erun has already re-stated the pacing contract several times with no sign the session resumed. Whipping it again does not help; either the session needs a reply in its own pane, or it needs restarting. The cap resets automatically once the session shows fresh activity on its own.

Flags

Flag	Description
--tenant, --environment	Target one environment (both required together). Omit both to whip every configured environment plus every persisted orchestrator.
--dry-run	Resolve and report what would happen — which targets would be pushed, skipped, or capped — without writing anything into any session. Still calls each reachable environment's edge (with its own preview flag set, so nothing is written) to give a real answer rather than a guess.
--json	Emit the full report as JSON.

Examples

# Whip everything configured: every environment, every persisted orchestrator.
erun whip

# Whip one environment.
erun whip --tenant my-tenant --environment dev

# See what would happen without pushing anything.
erun whip --dry-run

Configuration

The nudge message, the staleness threshold, and the consecutive-nudge cap are configurable in ~/.erun/config.yaml, under a whip section — editable without a rebuild, and unset by default (an install that configures nothing keeps exactly today's text and bounds):

whip:
  message: "Keep going — commit incrementally and run the gate in the foreground."
  staleafterseconds: 600
  maxnudges: 6

Key	Default	Effect
message	The built-in pacing text	What gets typed into a nudged session.
staleafterseconds	600 (10 minutes)	How long the automatic desktop pass waits before nudging a quiet orchestrator. erun whip's own explicit pass ignores this — see Explicit means explicit.
maxnudges	6	Consecutive un-answered nudges before a target is capped instead of nudged again.

This section is read by the desktop's automatic pass, by every environment's own whip MCP tool, and by this command — one configuration, every surface.

From an MCP-connected orchestrator

The environment half of this command reaches an Agent through the whip MCP tool, scoped to that server's own environment — see MCP overview · whip.

Error behaviour

Failure	Behaviour
Only one of --tenant/--environment given.	Errors, naming the conflict; nothing is read or pushed.
An environment has no reachable MCP edge.	Reported in the output as skipped — not alive; the command itself still exits 0.
A persisted orchestrator.	Always reported skipped — unreachable from this transport; the command itself still exits 0.
No environments and no orchestrators configured at all.	Exits 0 with an empty report.