Teammates and drivers
Every teammate runs on one of two kinds of driver.
Toad Agent
Section titled “Toad Agent”Toad’s own agent, in-process, on a provider key you connected. It has workspace file tools, a shell, Toad’s own tools (asking you for help, messaging a teammate, scheduling itself), and any MCP servers you grant. Its model and reasoning effort are picked from the title bar. Its shell and file tools are confined to the workspace unless you grant Whole machine.
A harness you already have
Section titled “A harness you already have”Any of these runs as a teammate in its own lane, with its own login, tools and permission policy:
| Teammate | Needs on this machine |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | the claude CLI, and npx |
| Codex | the codex CLI, and npx |
| Cursor | cursor-agent |
| opencode | opencode |
| Gemini CLI | gemini |
| Grok Build | grok |
Toad also reads the Agent Client Protocol
registry of published agents once a day, so other agents that speak it show
up in the picker as they appear. A row the machine cannot start says what is
missing, usually a CLI that is not on your PATH. Toad never downloads an
agent for you; npx fetches the small adapter that Claude Code and Codex
speak through.
The chat header for these teammates shows the model and effort the harness advertises. Their own permission model shows in the pane as Externally managed; Toad passes on the modes the harness offers rather than inventing its own. File reads and writes the harness asks Toad to do stay inside the workspace.
Settings → General → New teammates run on sets which driver a new teammate gets.
The teammate pane
Section titled “The teammate pane”Open a teammate and press ⌘/Ctrl + I. The pane sits beside the conversation and controls:
- Purpose. The sentence written into the workspace as
AGENTS.md. - Working directory. Reveal it, or choose another folder.
- Access. Workspace only, or Whole machine (Toad Agent).
- Background work. Whether the teammate may schedule its own wakes. Off by default. See Schedules.
- Collaboration. Which other teammates it may message, granted per direction the first time it is tried.
- Tools. Which MCP servers it gets. See Tools and MCP servers.
- Computer. A containerized desktop of its own. See The computer.
- Threads. Its exchanges with other teammates.
Changing anything the driver is built from restarts the session. The conversation keeps going from the same tape.