Ask AI Remote Sessions: Drive, Share and Review Studio and CLI Work from the Web
TestRelic Team
In September, Ask AI's Remote tab let you watch a Studio or CLI conversation as it happened. Since then it has become somewhere to do the work. From the web you can reply and approve, start a session on your own computer or on a runner, bring your team in, and review every file the agent changes.
Reply, approve and stop from the web
A Remote session is no longer read-only. The composer reads "Reply to device…", and a message sent while a turn is running waits in a queue until you Send now or Remove it. When the agent stops for an approval, you can answer from the web with Yes, run it, No, skip this or No — tell it what to do instead. Stop this turn interrupts it.
The device still runs every turn itself, with its own tools and permission rules. "Don't ask again" and Autopilot can only be turned on there. Replying from the web needs Studio or the CLI 1.2.1 or later.
Start a session without opening Studio
New Session on the Remote tab opens New remote session:
- Your devices lists the Studio apps you're signed in to. Pick a recent folder, say what the agent should do, and the chat opens and runs in Studio on that computer.
- A runner from Infrastructure starts the session on a machine you control. In GitHub Actions or GitLab CI,
testrelic runner session --id <session-id>clones the branch, installs dependencies, runs the agent and can open a pull request; the job proves who it is with the CI provider's OIDC token, so no TestRelic secret is stored. On an AWS, GCP or Azure machine,testrelic runner daemon --target <target-id>waits for sessions and runs them one at a time.
Share a session with your workspace
The owner of a session gets Share in its header. Give workspace members Can view or Can collaborate, or open the session to Everyone in the workspace to view. Viewers see the live session, its transcript and its artifacts, and can Request to collaborate.
A collaborator's message runs on the owner's device with the owner's tools and permissions, and the transcript says who sent it. Approvals, stopping a turn and ending the session stay with the owner. Sessions shared with you appear under Shared with me, and if you haven't seen a share in the app within 5 minutes, one email tells you about it.
It reads like Studio, and can plan first
A Remote session now looks like Studio's own chat. Answers are headed TestRelic with how long the agent worked, runs of tool calls fold into one "N actions" line, and a message from Studio shows only what the person typed, not the instructions Studio adds to it.
The composer has Studio's options too. ⏸ Plan first (or Shift+Tab, or /permission) gives the next turn only the device's read-only tools, so the agent reads, plans and changes nothing. The + menu attaches text files or references a test or run, / lists /model, /effort, /memory and the report, dashboard and deck prompts, and Chat settings choose the model and reasoning effort for your messages.
Review the code before you approve it
Code no longer fills the chat. A long block folds into a card, and every file the agent saved, deleted or diffed gets a card with its lines added and removed. Opening one shows it in the Artifact pane, with a Code view and a Changes diff against the last copy of that file the chat saw.
When the device asks before saving a file, Review changes on the approval card opens it in the pane, so you can read what will be written before you answer Yes, run it.
You decide what the web can do
Each Studio chat has a Web control on / Web control off switch in its header. Settings → Chat → TestRelic web app sets the default for new chats and whether the web may start chats on your computer. In the CLI, --no-remote-control, the remoteControl config key, TESTRELIC_REMOTE_CONTROL and /remote off do the same. With web control off, the web can still watch.
Get started
Open Ask AI and switch the sidebar to Remote. Sessions from Studio and the CLI appear there on their own. To run sessions in CI or on your own cloud machines, set up a runner under Infrastructure. Each release along the way is in the changelog.