Coder powers secure, scalable development across key industries — automotive, finance, government, and technology — enabling faster builds, tighter compliance, and seamless AI adoption in enterprise-grade cloud environments.
This feature is experimental. Pin a release before broad rollout and review
the release notes before upgrading.
Enable the experiment
coder server --experiments=chat-advisor
Or set the environment variable:
CODER_EXPERIMENTS=chat-advisor
What it does
Lets a root agent pause its current turn and request strategic guidance from
a separate, single-step model call. The advisor sees recent conversation
context, runs without any tools, and returns concise advice for the root
agent rather than the end user. While active, it is the only tool the root
agent can call for that turn.
Useful for planning ambiguity, architectural tradeoffs, debugging strategy
after repeated failures, or risk reduction before a destructive operation.
Configuration
Once the experiment is enabled, configure the advisor under AI Settings >
Coder Agents > Advisor.
Field
Default
Notes
Max uses per turn
0 (unlimited)
Caps how many times the root agent can call the advisor in a single chat turn. Must be a non-negative integer.
Max output tokens
0 (server default)
Caps the advisor model's response length. 0 uses the server default of 16,384 tokens. Must be a non-negative integer.
Advisor model
Use chat model
Optional dedicated chat model config for the advisor. When unset, the advisor reuses the root agent's model.
Reasoning effort
Model default
Overrides the selected advisor model's reasoning effort. Available only when the model supports selectable effort.
The advisor is not available in plan mode or to subagents. Failed advisor
invocations refund the per-turn budget, and advisor calls are not metered
against the root chat's usage limit.
