Engine and Auth

The engine is the coven-code binary that powers the interactive surfaces (coven, coven chat) and the engine passthrough commands. Coven pins a known-good engine version and can manage the install itself.

Engine management

coven engine manages the interactive agent runtime:

coven engine status          # resolved engine path, source, version, pin state
coven engine status --json   # machine-readable
coven engine install         # download the pinned engine into ~/.coven/engine
coven engine install --version <v> --force   # specific version, reinstall
coven engine which           # print the engine binary path (exit 1 if none)

install verifies the archive against a pinned SHA-256; --sha256 <HEX> supplies an expected checksum only when no built-in pin exists. which is designed for scripts and editor integrations:

"$(coven engine which)" --version

Engine passthrough

Four top-level commands forward directly to the installed engine, so you never have to invoke coven-code yourself:

Arguments after the verb are passed through unchanged. coven code adds no leading subcommand, so it reaches anything the engine exposes:

coven auth             # engine credential management
coven models           # list models available to the engine
coven code --help      # the engine's own help, via the escape hatch

All four require an installed engine and fail with a pointer to coven engine install when none resolves.

Related

• Interactive shell for how coven and coven chat hand off to the engine.
• Install for installing the coven CLI itself.
• Doctor reports the same engine resolution with the minimum supported version.