Ask questions

Use rply ask when a decision belongs to the person, not the agent. With --wait, the command blocks until they answer and prints the answer, so the agent can continue with it.

Offer choices

rply ask "Publish the 5 new pages to acme.dev?" --choices "Publish,Not yet" --wait

A question with Publish and Not yet buttons

When they tap a button, the command prints the label and exits:

Publish

Use it in a script like any other command:

if [ "$(rply ask "Deploy to production?" --choices Deploy,Skip --wait)" = "Deploy" ]; then
  ./deploy.sh
fi

Options for choices:

Option	Effect
`--multi`	Allow picking several. The answer is a JSON array.
`--other`	Allow a typed answer besides the choices.
`--danger`	Style the choices as destructive.
`--title <title>`	Bold title above the question.

Ask for a confirmation

For a single destructive action, use one confirm button:

rply ask "Delete the 40 snapshots older than 90 days to free up 31 GB?" \
  --confirm "Delete 40 snapshots" --danger --wait

A question with a red Delete 40 snapshots button

Ask for free text

Without --choices, --confirm or input blocks, the person gets a text field:

rply ask "What should the new landing page headline say?" --wait

Ask several things at once

Send a form with --form. Each field has a name, which keys the answer:

rply ask "New page details" --wait --form '[
  {"name":"title","label":"Title","required":true},
  {"name":"tone","label":"Tone","type":"select","options":["Formal","Casual"]},
  {"name":"notes","label":"Notes","type":"textarea"}
]'

Field types are text (the default), textarea, number, select and toggle. Several questions print a JSON object:

{"title":"Teams pricing","tone":"Casual","notes":"Mention the annual discount"}

For full control over the inputs, pass input blocks with --blocks instead.

Set a deadline and a default

A question can expire, and it can fall back to a default when it does:

rply ask "Which tone?" --choices Formal,Casual --default Casual --expires 2h --wait

--expires 2h stops accepting answers after two hours.
--default Casual is the answer used if it expires. Without a default, an expired question exits with code 2.
--timeout 30m stops waiting after 30 minutes. When you wait, the question also expires then, unless you set --expires.

Durations look like 30s, 10m, 2h or 1d.

Ask now, wait later

Without --wait, rply ask prints the question’s id and returns immediately:

Asked (id: 9tkppbb8nh0jayn2). Get the answer with: rply wait 9tkppbb8nh0jayn2

Do other work, then collect the answer:

rply wait 9tkppbb8nh0jayn2 --timeout 1h

List questions that are still open with rply asks, and withdraw one with rply cancel <id>.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	Answered (or the default was used)
`2`	Expired without a default, or `--timeout` ran out
`3`	Cancelled