botctl — Process Manager for Autonomous AI Agents

1 min read Original article ↗

YAML frontmatter for settings, markdown body for the prompt.

--- name: code-reviewer interval_seconds: 60 max_turns: 20 --- Review open PRs and post comments...

Spawns Claude with your prompt, tools, and workspace. Runs, logs, and sleeps on a loop.

$ botctl start code-reviewer -d Harness started (pid 48201) $ botctl logs code-reviewer -f [run #1] Reviewing PR #49...

Every run saves its session. Resume where Claude left off, or send messages to redirect a running bot.

$ botctl start review --message "focus on PR 51" Message queued, waking bot...

Edit BOT.md and the next run picks up changes. No restarts, no deploys, no downtime.

# change max_turns in BOT.md max_turns: 20 max_turns: 50 # next run uses new value automatically

Search, install, and share reusable skill modules from GitHub. Skills inject capabilities into any bot's prompt.

$ botctl skills search slack $ botctl skills add owner/repo --skill slack-notify $ botctl skills list

Monitor and control bots from the browser. Same capabilities as the TUI — start, stop, message, and stream logs.

$ botctl --web-ui Dashboard at http://localhost:4444 $ botctl --web-ui --port 8080