---
name: phone-opus
description: Use when you want a consultative Claude Code pass through the local `phone_opus` MCP server. Trigger for blocking second-opinion analysis, repository inspection, summaries, or planning where Claude should have read-only built-in tools but no edit capability.
---

# phone-opus

Use `phone_opus.consult` when you want a blocking Claude Code consult without edit permissions.

## When to use it

Whenever you're making a *major, nontrivial, high level* design decision, you should get a second opinion from Opus.
Opus is intelligent and has a different perspective, so takes its feedback seriously; but nothing it says
should be taken as authoritative or final. It is a pure consultant.

- Ask for a second opinion on code, architecture, debugging, or design.
- Point Claude at a specific repository with `cwd`.
- Reuse `session_id` from an earlier call when you want Claude to continue the same conversation.
- Set `background: true` when you want to launch a consult, keep working, and poll for the answer later.

## Tool surface

- `consult`
  - required: `prompt`
  - optional: `cwd`, `session_id`, `background`, `render`, `detail`
- `consult_job`
  - required: `job_id`
- `consult_jobs`
  - optional: `limit`, `render`, `detail`
- `health_snapshot`
- `telemetry_snapshot`

## Runtime posture

- Pins Claude to Opus 4.6 with max effort.
- Prepends a fixed consult prefix before your prompt so Opus knows it is advising another model in read-only mode and should return a prioritized actionable report.
- Uses `--dangerously-skip-permissions`, but wraps Claude in an external `systemd-run --user` sandbox.
- The sandbox keeps the filesystem globally read-only, gives Claude a separate persistent home under phone-opus state, leaves `/tmp` and `/var/tmp` writable, and forces the consulted `cwd` read-only when that tree would otherwise be writable.
- This surface is consultative only. Edit tools are unavailable.
- The returned `session_id` is reusable: pass it back into a later `consult` call to continue that Claude conversation.
- Background consults return a `job_id`; use `consult_job` to poll one job or `consult_jobs` to rediscover recent ones.

## Example

Call `phone_opus.consult` with:

- `prompt`: `Inspect the Rust workspace and tell me where the retry logic is brittle.`
- `cwd`: `/absolute/path/to/repo`

Expect a blocking response containing Claude's answer plus execution metadata such as duration, turn count, session id, and cost when available.