Getting started

Switchback is one agent skill, /switchback, and the switchback CLI behind it. Use it when you want to step away from the screen and think something through yourself. Your agent puts together a few pages from ready-made templates, fitted to the job and to the pens and paper on your desk. You print them and work them by hand, then photograph the pages and send them back, and the agent carries on from what you wrote. The friction is on purpose. It can also print a draft or spec as numbered pages for you to mark up (proof mode).

Write freely in black. Blue is a question for your agent, red is something you’re unsure of, and the highlighter marks the one thing that matters most. With only one pen, circle a letter instead: Q, R or X. The ink page has every mark.

Install

Pick the line that matches your setup. You need Node.js 20.12 or later, a printer, a pen and a phone camera.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add vandermerwed/switchback
/plugin install switchback@switchback

Codex, opencode, Cursor and other agents that read skills

npx skills add vandermerwed/switchback

The skill drives the switchback CLI and fetches it with npx the first time it runs. To install the CLI once instead of fetching it each time:

npm install -g @vandermerwed/switchback

PDFs come from Chrome, Edge or Chromium. Without one of those installed, the CLI still writes the HTML page, and you print that from any browser: Print, margins None, background graphics on, scale 100%.

Your first sitting

Ask your agent the way you normally would: “I’m giving a talk next week, help me plan it on paper,” or “print this draft so I can mark it up.” /switchback reads the request and picks a mode for you: workbook to make pages, proof to print a document, or desk to save the pens and paper you have. For a workbook you get one confirmation message before anything is built, so you can correct the style, the pages or the pens before printing. A proof is built straight away, since it prints your document as it is.

Once you say yes, the agent builds a PDF (or an HTML page with print steps, if no PDF renderer is available) in a switchback/ folder inside your working directory. Print it, take the phone somewhere else, and work through it in the ink the cover describes. Cross-outs stay on the page; nothing gets tidied up before you send it back.

Sending photos back

When you are done, photograph every page flat, with the page’s header visible, and send all the photos together. That is read mode: the agent answers the questions you wrote in your Ask pen first, then works through the rest of what you marked, in the order the pages were printed. A page that does not come back in the photos is not automatically a problem — a Sitting, Series or Incubation workbook closes with a return checklist that lists exactly what to photograph; a Ritual is a single page, and a proof has no closing pages at all, so you just send everything back.

Read the full loop for why the steps are in this order, or jump straight to a mode to see what you say and what you get.

The pages come from a catalogue of templates, sorted into collections such as planning, product and game development. The agent picks from them for you, but you can browse them or ask for a collection by name.

See the privacy page for what stays on your machine, and what your agent’s model provider sees when you send back a photo.