Session Goals

A goal turns one prompt into a finish line. Instead of nudging the agent with “continue” after every reply, you set a goal once — and OpenChamber keeps the session working toward it automatically, checking progress with an independent auditor after every turn. It keeps running even while you are away.

Start a goal

Press the target button in the composer. It lights up — goal mode is armed.
Type your prompt and send it. That message becomes the goal’s objective.

This works in an existing session and in a new session draft alike: arm the target, write the first message, send — the new session starts with the goal already active.

More ways to start a goal

From an agent’s reply: in the “Start new session from this answer” dialog, check Run as goal — the reply is handed over as an assignment the new session executes to completion (combine with Create worktree for an isolated run).
From a plan: when implementing a saved plan in a new session or worktree, check Run as goal in the dialog. The goal carries the plan content as its objective, so the auditor judges progress against the actual plan.
On a schedule: check Run as goal on a scheduled task to make recurring runs pursue their prompt to completion.

Write a self-contained objective

The progress auditor sees only your objective and the agent’s latest reply — not the chat history. So phrase the goal message so that someone without the conversation context would understand what the finished state looks like.

Good: “Add tests for the export module and make the whole test suite pass.”
Not so good: “Fix it” or “Continue with that idea.”

For small contextual follow-ups you don’t need a goal — just send a normal message.

How it works

After the agent stops and the session stays quiet for a moment, OpenChamber:

Asks a small, cheap model to audit the latest turn against the objective: keep going, done, or stuck?
If the verdict is “keep going”, it sends a continuation prompt and the agent picks the work back up.
If the objective is verifiably achieved, the goal completes and you get a notification.
If the agent is genuinely stuck (needs your input), the goal stops as blocked — but only after the auditor says so three times in a row, so a one-off snag never ends the goal.

There are hard safety stops too: an optional token budget, a cap on automatic continuations, and a stop on turn errors. If the session’s context gets compacted mid-work, the goal simply continues — running into the context window is proof the work wasn’t finished.

Stopping and resuming

The stop button aborts the running turn and pauses the goal — your explicit “stop” always wins over the loop.
Pause on the goal strip does the same from the other direction: it pauses the goal and stops the running turn.
While paused, chat normally — the loop stays out of the way.
Resume re-arms the loop: on an idle session the continuation nudge goes out immediately; if the agent happens to be working, the loop silently re-attaches at its next pause.

Watch and manage

The strip above the composer shows the goal’s latest progress note, status, and token usage, with an inline pause/resume button. When the agent has stopped and the goal is active, the strip shows a spinning Evaluating… — that’s the quiet window and the audit running.
The target button stays lit while the goal runs (blue), turns green on completion, and red when blocked or out of budget. Press it to open the goal dialog: edit the objective or budget, or remove the goal. A completed goal is read-only — remove it, then arm a new one.
In the session sidebar, a small target appears next to the session date, colored by the goal’s state.

Notifications

While a goal is active, the per-turn “agent is ready” notifications are suppressed — they would just echo the goal loop’s own continuations. When the goal settles (complete, blocked, or budget reached) you get one final notification instead, on desktop and as a mobile push. It obeys the same “notify on completion” setting; permission requests, questions, and error notifications keep working as usual throughout.

Token budget

In Settings → Chat → Goal you can set a default token budget for new goals. When a goal reaches its budget it stops as “budget reached” instead of spending more — you can raise the budget and resume from the goal dialog.

Keep in mind

The goal loop runs in the OpenChamber server, not in your browser tab. Close the tab, lock the phone — the agent keeps working, and you get a notification when the goal settles. The server (desktop app or openchamber process) must stay running.
Goals use your session’s own provider and model, including the auditor calls — nothing leaves the providers you already use.
One goal per session at a time.

Scheduled Tasks — run a prompt on a schedule; enable “Run as goal” there to make a scheduled run pursue its prompt to completion
Notifications — how you hear about a finished goal