ADR 0018: bot-bottle start --auto runs the suggested bottle without asking

Syntax in this record predates v0.1.9; see manifest.md.

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-11-05
• Deciders: didericis

Context

The guided start shows the suggested bottle and asks before running it. Some users want the speed of YOLO mode (just run the agent), but with a boundary sized to the task rather than none. Asking every time is the friction that pushes people towards a wide-open bottle.

Decision

--auto skips the confirm step and runs the suggestion as it is.

• It prints one line saying what it chose: the bottles it reuses or stacks and any additions (--auto: running in basic, adding egress api.open-meteo.com (from architect)). The bottles used are already in the run's audit, and an unsaved one's full text with them (ADR 0017), so there's no separate record.
• It doesn't save the bottle (ADR 0017).
• Anything the bottle missed goes through the existing supervise approvals at runtime. Whether an approval persists stays the user's choice there.
• BOT_BOTTLE_START_AUTO=1 makes it the default; --no-auto asks again for one run.
• Without a terminal nothing prompts, so --auto is the only way to use a suggestion there, and the task must come as an argument: bot-bottle start --auto "fix the flaky test".

Consequences

• Speed without an unbounded agent: the suggestion is validated like any bottle (redundant and invalid elements dropped, no inspect: false, no secret values), and the gateway still enforces it.
• A bad suggestion runs without review. The mitigations are its narrow defaults (the architect biases toward too little access), the one-line summary, the audit, and supervise approvals for what it missed.

Links

• ADR 0017: suggested bottles aren't saved unless asked.
• architect.md.
• PRD 0117 (design repo): suggested bottles.