Automation

The Automation pane is the one setting in the editor that is not per-workspace. It configures Bromure Agentic Coding's HTTP automation API — a loopback control plane that external tools, scripts, and AI agents use to manage workspaces and sessions — and it applies to the whole app. Because it belongs to no single workspace, it appears only when you open the editor as the app's Preferences.

There is no screenshot for this pane in this chapter: it is reached through Bromure → Preferences… (⌘,), where the editor is bound to the preferences template and the Automation category is added to the bottom of the category sidebar. It does not appear when you edit an ordinary workspace.

Note: Unlike every per-workspace pane, this one is not transactional. Its controls write app preferences the moment you change them — there is no Save step, and the toggle takes effect immediately.

What the automation server is

The pane's summary explains it plainly: Bromure Agentic Coding exposes an HTTP API on the loopback interface that lets external tools manage workspaces and sessions, and the bundled bromure-cli mcp subcommand wraps the same surface for AI agents such as Claude Code and Claude Desktop.

Two access paths share this one HTTP surface, and it is worth keeping them apart:

• The control socket — an always-on, owner-only Unix socket at ~/Library/Application Support/BromureAC/control.sock (mode 0600). The bromure-cli command-line tool talks to the app over this socket. It is independent of this pane: the CLI works whether or not the automation server is enabled, because the file permissions on the socket are its access gate.
• The automation API — the same routes exposed over TCP, off by default, enabled here. This is what external HTTP clients and the bromure-cli mcp server use. Turning this off does not affect the CLI.

The complete route list, the CLI, and the MCP servers are documented in Automation & the CLI.

Enable automation server

The Enable automation server switch turns the TCP listener on and off. Its caption reflects the current state:

• When on: Listening on 127.0.0.1:9223. Toggling this off stops the server immediately; the MCP subcommand will no longer reach the app.
• When off: Off — the HTTP API and the MCP subcommand are unavailable.

The server is off by default. While it is off, the bromure-cli mcp stdio server has nothing to connect to, so any MCP client configured against it will report no tools until you enable the server here.

Warning: The automation API has no authentication. On the loopback interface, profile and session listing and session create/close are open to any local process; the mutating and introspection routes (workspace control, exec, app state, debug) additionally require the app to have been launched with BROMURE_DEBUG_CLAUDE. Because there is no auth, exposing the listener beyond loopback is a real risk — see Bind address below.

Port and bind address

Two fields tune where the server listens:

• Port — the TCP port, with a placeholder of (default: 9223) and a valid range of 1–65535. The default of 9223 is deliberately one off from the Bromure web browser's automation port (9222), so both apps can run side by side.
• Bind address — the interface to bind, defaulting to 127.0.0.1. Any value other than loopback raises an orange warning: Non-loopback bind exposes the API to the network. The MCP server has no auth. Keep this at 127.0.0.1 unless you fully understand the exposure.

The pane notes the timing: Port and bind address take effect the next time the server starts. Toggling the switch off and on applies them now. In other words, change the port or address, then flip Enable automation server off and on to rebind immediately.

MCP client configuration

The bottom of the pane holds a ready-to-paste MCP client configuration snippet for wiring the bromure-cli mcp server into an MCP client. It reads: add this to ~/.config/claude-code/.mcp.json (or your MCP client's equivalent):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bromure-cli": {
      "command": "/Applications/Bromure Agentic Coding.app/Contents/MacOS/bromure-cli",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The command points straight at the app binary inside the bundle. Enable the automation server first, since the MCP server's session and profile tools call the HTTP API you just turned on.

Where the settings live

Everything in this pane is stored in the app's preferences under the io.bromure.agentic-coding domain, not in any profile.json. The same three keys can be set from the command line or via AppleScript, which is useful for scripted provisioning:

For example, defaults write io.bromure.agentic-coding automation.enabled -bool true enables the server, and AppleScript's set ac app setting "automation.enabled" to value "true" toggles it live. The mechanics of both, along with everything the API and MCP servers can do, are in Automation & the CLI.