Tips & Tricks

Advanced usage patterns and power-user tips for xbot.

Long conversations fill the context window. When you switch to a new task, run /clear to start fresh. The agent’s memory system retains important context across sessions.

If you want to keep the conversation but reduce token usage, use /compress. This summarizes older messages and frees up context space without losing the thread.

The context_edit tool lets you delete specific turns or messages from the conversation — useful for removing a large tool output that’s no longer relevant.

Use Ctrl+L to switch the model for the current session only — without affecting other sessions. This is great for using a cheaper model for simple tasks and a stronger model for complex ones.

Create subscriptions for different providers and switch with Ctrl+P:

• One for daily work (balanced cost/quality)
• One for complex reasoning (premium model)
• One for quick lookups (fast/cheap model)

Configure Vanguard / Balance / Swift tiers in /settings so SubAgents automatically use the right model for the task complexity.

Don’t do everything yourself. Delegate focused tasks:

• explore — codebase exploration and analysis
• Custom agents in ~/.xbot/agents/ — your own specialized roles

Use the Meeting Mode to get multiple expert perspectives:

"Review this API design. Get input from security, performance, and UX
experts, then synthesize."

The agent can schedule tasks for itself:

"Every morning at 9 AM, check the CI status and notify me of any failures."

Use background mode for build processes, dev servers, and tests:

"Run the test suite in the background and tell me the results."

The agent gives you a task ID — check progress with task_status without blocking the conversation.

The agent can create rich Feishu cards with buttons, images, and interactive elements. Just describe what you want:

"Create a Feishu card showing the project status with clickable buttons for
each section."

Read, write, and manage Feishu Bitable (multidimensional tables):

"Read the project tracker Bitable and create a summary of overdue tasks."

Create and edit Feishu Docs programmatically:

"Create a meeting notes Doc with today's action items."

The agent can adjust its own settings — no manual config editing needed:

• “Switch to dark theme”
• “Set max concurrency to 5”
• “Change the font size to large”
• “Resize the sidebar to 40 characters”

Create custom themes as JSON files in ~/.xbot/themes/. Ask the agent: “Create a custom theme with a warm color palette.”

Create Skills (Markdown files in ~/.xbot/skills/) for workflows you repeat:

• A GitHub PR review skill
• A deployment checklist skill
• A code style guide skill

Tip

The best tip: Just ask the agent to do things. xbot is designed to be conversational — if you can describe what you want, the agent can probably figure out how to do it.

• CLI Reference — complete keyboard shortcuts
• Use Cases — real-world scenarios
• FAQ — common questions