Which TOVIO surface should I use?

CLI, editors, desktop, SDK, MCP — what each is for and which are pre-release.

Written By Dustin

Last updated 29 minutes ago

The CLI is the complete surface. Everything else is a convenience over it, and some are less finished than others.

Surface	State, and what it is for
CLI	Complete and the reference implementation. Every capability appears here first, every command takes `--json` and `--quiet`. Start here.
VS Code extension	Built. Source control and status, quick diff, reasoning on hover, lane switching, conflicts, health, and the agent and token surfaces.
JetBrains plugin	Built, with its acceptance evidence still open. Usable, less proven than the VS Code extension.
Desktop app	Pre-release. Many operations now run through the same shared engine as the CLI, but broad UI parity, the installers, and the updater are open work. Worth trying, not yet worth depending on.
Web dashboard	Commercial, and needs a running Forge to do anything. There is no hosted one to point it at.
Node SDK	Built, over the native bindings, for scripting and integrations.
MCP server	Built. This is how an AI agent talks to TOVIO. Every call validates the capability token.
CI bridge	Built, for running TOVIO steps inside an existing pipeline.

Choosing

Evaluating TOVIO? The CLI. Run tovio quickstart for the guided tour, which builds a throwaway repository and removes it afterwards.
Daily work in an editor? The CLI plus the VS Code extension.
Wiring up an AI agent? The MCP server, under a capability token. Read the agents collection before you issue one.
Automating something? The Node SDK, or the CLI with --json. Both the JSON shapes and the TVO-* codes are a declared compatibility surface.

How the MCP edge is reached

The agent edge runs over stdio — the usual case for a locally spawned agent — or over Streamable HTTP. HTTP defaults to loopback, which needs no secret; binding it to a non-loopback address requires a bearer secret and refuses to start without one. The capability enforcement is identical on both transports, and the effective scope is exposed to the agent so it can see its own limits rather than discovering them by failing.

What is deliberately CLI-only

The agent surface has no tool for obliteration, policy modification, key management, or unconstrained token issuance. That is by construction, not an oversight — those tools are not registered at all, so an agent cannot reach them even with a broad token. tovio obliterate, which permanently erases an object's payload and leaves a signed tombstone, additionally demands the exact confirmation phrase obliterate <object-hash>; a generic --yes is rejected on purpose. Irreversible destruction stays a human action.