Attention & status

In a grid of busy panes, a human can’t watch them all. Two lightweight signals let a pane — usually an agent driving itself — say “look at me” and “here’s what I’m doing” without anyone scraping its output.

Both default to your own pane ($LOOM_PANE) when you don’t name a target, so a process can flag itself.

Attention — the amber border

loom attention            # border my own pane
loom attention Faye       # border the Faye pane
loom attention --clear    # drop the border

Raises an amber “needs you” border on the pane so it stands out across the grid and the Fleet panel. The border clears automatically when the pane is focused — so once you look, it stops shouting. You can also clear it explicitly with --clear.

Typical use: an agent hits something only a human can resolve (an API key, a judgment call) and borders itself so you notice.

Status — a short label

loom status "running tests (3/5)"     # label my own pane
loom status Faye "waiting on key"      # label the Faye pane
loom status --clear                    # clear my label
loom status Faye --clear               # clear Faye's label

Sets a short status label on the pane — a running progress note. Set it as work proceeds; clear it when done.

How the target is figured out

status decides what’s a pane name and what’s label text the same way the code does:

• --clear with an optional lone positional → that positional is the pane, otherwise it’s your pane.
• One token plus a calling pane → that token is your status text (not a pane name).
• Two or more tokens → the first is the target pane, the rest is the text.

If your status text starts with a dash, end flag parsing first:

loom status -- --resuming

Putting them together

# Flag yourself blocked so the human notices, and say why
loom attention
loom status "waiting on API key"

# ...later, once unblocked
loom status --clear
# (the border already cleared when you focused the pane)

Agents get the same two calls as MCP tools — flag_attention and set_status, both defaulting to the caller’s own pane. See Agents, MCP & hooks.