Cpipe

Use cpipe to interact with ToolServer instances (servers following the tool-* pipe naming convention). Always activate the named-pipes conda environment first.

conda activate named-pipes

Discover running servers

cpipe --list          # list tool pipes (tool-* convention) under /tmp (fast, no process scan)
cpipe --pid           # same, but also show which PIDs have each pipe open
cpipe --clear         # delete orphaned tool pipes (no live process) under /tmp

Pass an optional directory to search a different root (e.g. cpipe --list /var/tmp).

Send commands to a tool server

cpipe <tool> <cmd>

<tool> is either a bare tool name (e.g. chat) — which resolves to /tmp/tool-chat — or a full pipe path. <cmd> is the command to send.

Built-in commands every tool supports

cpipe chat ping                 # health check — responds with "pong"
cpipe chat status               # current state of the server (e.g. "running")
cpipe chat description          # one-line description of the tool
cpipe chat help                 # full help text (SKILL.md content)
cpipe chat stop                 # shut the server down gracefully

Sending data

cpipe chat greet -d Alice                        # -d / --data sets the "data" field
cpipe chat greet Alice                           # positional DATA works too
cpipe chat chat -j '{"messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'  # merge extra JSON fields

Streaming responses

cpipe detects streaming automatically. Chunks are printed as they arrive; the command exits after the final {"done": true} sentinel.

cpipe chat chat -j '{"messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Tell me a joke"}]}'

Protocol flags

Flag	Effect
--no-subscribe	Skip the subscribe/unsubscribe handshake entirely
-n / --no-wait	Fire-and-forget; do not wait for a response
-t SECS / --timeout SECS	Response timeout in seconds (default: 5.0)
-v / --verbose	Print sent messages and status to stderr

Examples

cpipe --list                                         # what's running?
cpipe chat description                               # what does this tool do?
cpipe chat help                                      # full API reference
cpipe tts text -d "Hello, world"                     # send a text chunk to the TTS server
cpipe tts flush                                      # drain the TTS buffer
cpipe chat stop                                      # shut down the LLM server
cpipe --clear                                        # clean up stale pipes after a crash