Is ECA suitable for general-purpose chat use (outside pair programming)?

[judaew]

Hi 👋

I have a question regarding the intended use of ECA.

Does it make sense to use ECA for general-purpose conversations — not pair programming, but more like a regular web-based assistant for asking questions, exploring ideas, or doing analysis unrelated to code?

I find the project's functionality could be used for similar purposes. For example, by writing your own agent that wouldn't be tied to pair programming.

Would you recommend treating ECA strictly as a pair-programming tool, or is it reasonable to view it as a more general conversational/analysis platform as well?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[judaew]

I’ve implemented several experiments with my main agent and a subagent, and overall the all works very well. However, I’m facing a problem with tool restrictions that I cannot resolve. I cannot prohibit a subagent from using any tools, and an agent from using only a subagent call.

For the main agent, I defined the following:

Tools & Rules for Exploration:
- Allowed Tool: `eca__spawn_agent` (only with `agent: "subengineer"`).
- Execution Rules:

For the subagent, I configured:

---
mode: subagent
description: ...
tools:
  deny:
    - eca: {}
---

## Core Directives
- **Tools: NO TOOLS ALLOWED.**

[ericdallo]

@judaew yes, ECA can be used today for vibe coding or any other chat task with no issues.

maybe try this subagent config:

---
mode: subagent
description: ...
tools:
  byDefault: deny
---

LMK if that doesn't work so we can discuss