Zed over ACP

Run bobby as an external agent in Zed. Zed sends structured JSON prompts, and bobby runs them against a browser with the same checkpoint and recovery behavior as the other surfaces. Protocol details are in ACP.

Set up

bobby install --cli --yes
bobby doctor

Add bobby to Zed's settings.json:

{
  "agent_servers": {
    "bobby-browser": {
      "type": "custom",
      "command": "bobby",
      "args": ["acp-stdio"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

bobby acp-stdio loads the bootstrap credential and attaches to the shared local runtime, so Zed, MCP hosts and bobby serve use one browser runtime. No credential goes in settings.json.

Use it

Open the agent panel, start a thread with bobby-browser, and send each request as one JSON message.

Fill a field:

{"url": "https://example.com/signup", "workflowId": "9ad0bf05-f3ed-4f7a-a9bd-db6ffe6fbf99", "intent": {"kind": "fill", "input": {"purpose": "Name", "hints": {"role": "textbox", "accessibleName": "Name"}, "value": {"kind": "setText", "value": "Maya Chen"}}}}

Ask where the control is, from retained context:

{"operation": "contextAsk", "description": "Name"}

Read the workflow's checkpoint, then recover it:

{"operation": "recoveryStatus", "workflowId": "9ad0bf05-f3ed-4f7a-a9bd-db6ffe6fbf99"}
{"operation": "workflowRecover", "workflowId": "9ad0bf05-f3ed-4f7a-a9bd-db6ffe6fbf99"}

Reuse the same workflowId across messages to keep them in one workflow. checkpointSave takes a checkpoint and evidenceRefs: command IDs from earlier replies, which the runtime resolves to evidence itself.

See Evidence and checkpoints and Context graph.