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Introduction
Drafts and saved requests

Drafts and saved requests

What it is

What you type for an agent in the Runbooks panel, the request of n (up to 4000 characters) and the change E asks for, is kept on disk while you type it. Two things come of that:

  • Drafts. An unfinished request survives esc, quitting den and a crash. esc on a form with something in it asks Keep as a draft?; a kept draft is a row of the Runbooks list, and enter on it, or n, opens the form again where you left it. Step away to check something, then come back to it.
  • Saved requests. Once enter has created the runbook (or started the change), the request is kept with it. An agent that fails is restarted with enter on its tab, and den asks whether to send it the request again instead of starting it empty. After den itself restarted, E on the runbook opens filled with the request.

Requests stay on this machine, in den’s state folder, readable only by you: a request may hold a password. den mcp and --json never show them.

Configuration

Nothing is needed: drafts are kept for 30 days, and a saved request until its runbook is deleted. runbooks.drafts changes both:

runbooks:
  drafts:
    keep_request: until-exit        # until-deleted (default), until-exit or never
    days: 7                         # 0 keeps drafts until you delete them
KeyRequiredDefaultMeaning
drafts.keep_requestnountil-deletedWhat happens to a request once its runbook is created or its change started. until-deleted: kept until the runbook is deleted (D, den runbook delete). until-exit: removed when the agent exits cleanly by itself; a failed agent, or a tab den closed, keeps it. never: removed as soon as the agent has started; an agent that failed to start keeps it
drafts.daysno30Days an untouched draft is kept. Older drafts are deleted the next time the list is read. 0 keeps them until you delete them. A saved request follows keep_request, not days

den.yaml next to this page is the configuration of the recording.

Prerequisites

  • An agent CLI den can start (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, …) installed: without one, n asks only for a name and E starts nothing. The recording types requests but sends none, so the agent need not be logged in.
  • A home directory: drafts live in the state directory. Without one den keeps none, and esc closes a form as it always did.
  • No AWS, no IAM permissions.

Usage

Keep a draft. n, a name, a request, then esc:

╭─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│  ┃ New runbook name                                                 │
│  ┃ > Rotate app password                                            │
│                                                                     │
│    Ask an agent to write it (optional)                              │
│    > rotate the app user's password in Secrets Manager              │
│                                                                     │
│  Keep as a draft? y: keep  n: discard  esc: back to it              │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

y keeps it, n deletes it, esc goes back to the form. An empty form closes without asking. The form also saves itself a second after you stop typing, and when den quits (ctrl+c, q), so a crash loses at most the last second. E’s question works the same way.

Find it again. A draft is a row at the top of the list, TYPE draft, the first line of its request as the description; / finds it by its words. A draft of a change reads Greet (change):

   STATUS       NAME                   TYPE     DESCRIPTION
 ▸ ✎ 5m ago     Rotate app password    draft    rotate the app user's password in Secrets Manager
   ✎ 2d ago     Greet (change)         draft    ask for the name as a parameter
   ○ never      Greet                  sh       Says hello
Key on a draftWhat it does
enterOpens its form again, filled in: n’s for a new runbook, E’s in the runbook’s view for a change
DDeletes it, after Delete the draft “…”? y/n
r, x, m, ESay it is a draft: it runs nothing

n with drafts of new runbooks first offers them, newest first, under New runbook; with none it opens the form at once. E on a runbook with a draft of a change opens that draft.

Give a failed agent its request again. enter on the agent’s exited tab asks:

Restart the agent

It was started with:
  rotate the app user's password in Secrets Manager

Send the request again? y: send it  n: start empty  esc: cancel

y (or enter) sends it, n starts the agent without it, esc restarts nothing. With no saved request (keep_request: never, or already removed) the tab restarts at once.

After den restarted. Agent tabs live only in memory. E on a runbook with a saved request opens What should change in NAME? filled with it: enter sends it again, or change it first.

Where they are. One JSON file per draft or saved request, in ~/.local/state/den/runbook-drafts/ ($XDG_STATE_HOME/den/runbook-drafts, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\den\runbook-drafts on Windows), the folder 0700 and each file 0600. den paths lists it:

runbook drafts             exists   ~/.local/state/den/runbook-drafts  (requests typed for an agent; may hold secrets)

Deleting a runbook deletes its saved requests and drafts of changes to it, so a runbook given the name later inherits none of them. A saved request whose runbook folder was removed outside den is dropped when den starts; one whose runbook.yaml no longer loads is kept, since that is when it is wanted.

Limits. With until-exit, an agent you quit yourself (/exit in Claude Code) counts as a clean exit and takes the request with it. Drafts have no command line: den runbook new takes the request as an argument already. A draft saved by another den shows in the list after a refresh (leaving a runbook’s view, or changing a draft here).

To record this page’s demo: make tape TAPE=drafts.

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From the Runbooks panelFrom your agent