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General

orchestrate-agents

>- Orchestrate multiple agent CLIs (Claude, Codex, Gemini) via tmux with a shared fleet store, dispatching one guardian subagent per pane. Use when running a multi-agent session, dispatching parallel work, or coordinating subagents across panes.

orchestrate-agents

Orchestrate Agents

Requires tmux and at least one agent CLI (claude, codex, copilot, or gemini). Optional: agentspec (session transcripts), osascript (macOS notifications) or notify-send (Linux notifications). Run "$fleet" doctor to see which are present; a missing CLI just drops out of the preference order.

Run several interactive agent CLIs at once inside one tmux session, supervise them, and alert the user the moment one is blocked, errored, idle, or done. You are the orchestrator: careful, never silently let an agent stall.

scripts/fleet.sh owns the fragile tmux plumbing (spawn, send, capture, idle detection, alerting). You decide what to spawn and when to ping.

Set the helper path once, then drive it:

fleet="${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR:-$HOME/.agents/skills}/orchestrate-agents/scripts/fleet.sh"   # shared store; stable across tools
"$fleet" doctor          # confirm tmux + which agent CLIs + agentspec + notifier are present

If doctor shows a CLI missing, it just drops out of the preference order.

Model

  • Fleet = one tmux session. One per orchestration run.
  • Window = a workstream group (per feature, per repo, per phase).
  • Pane = one agent CLI. Reference agents by the pane id (%7) the helper returns, never by name (the user’s shell hook may auto-rename windows; pane ids and @fleet_* tags are immune).
  • Guardian = a guardian subagent dedicated to one pane. Spawned at the same moment as the pane. The orchestrator never reads capture directly during the supervision loop; it reads the guardian’s contract lines instead.

Tool preference when a workstream does not pin one: claude, codex first, then copilot, then gemini. See references/agent-clis.md for each CLI’s launch, headless, auto-approve, and resume flags.

Workflow

  1. Plan. Turn the request into workstreams (windows) and agents (panes). State the plan to the user before spawning: which tools, how many, what each does.

  2. Source prompts (optional). To assign a persona or skill as an agent’s brief, list what is available with agentspec manage list (add --format json to parse). Feed the chosen prompt to the agent in step 5.

  3. Start the fleet: "$fleet" start <fleet-name>. Print the ATTACH= line so the user can tmux attach and watch.

  4. Create groups and spawn agents:

    win=$("$fleet" group <fleet> backend | awk -F= '/WINDOW/{print $2}')
pane=$("$fleet" spawn <fleet> "$win" claude --name api --dir ~/repo | awk -F= '/PANE/{print $2}')

    spawn <fleet> <window> <tool> where tool is auto|claude|codex|copilot|gemini. It reuses the window’s first pane for the first agent, splits for the rest.

  5. Brief each agent. Wait until the pane shows a ready input box ("$fleet" capture <pane> until the CLI has booted), then send the task:

    "$fleet" send <pane> "Refactor the auth module. Run tests when done."

    send pastes multi-line text safely and submits.

    5b. Dispatch a guardian for this pane. Immediately after the first successful send, dispatch a guardian subagent for this pane (Claude Code: Task tool with subagent_type=guardian; Codex: /agent guardian inside the orchestrator session, or codex --profile guardian in a sidecar pane). Pass <fleet>, <pane>, the agent name, and the fleet.sh path as the brief. The guardian owns this pane until terminal state. See Agent invocations below for the exact calls.

  6. Open the dashboard (optional): "$fleet" dashboard <fleet> turns the control pane into a live, self-refreshing status table.

  7. Supervise. The orchestrator no longer polls list/capture for liveness. It consumes guardian contract lines (see Integration contract with guardian below) as events. The orchestrator’s only loop responsibility is: receive contract line, decide if user input is needed, surface the line to chat, collect the user’s reply, instruct the originating guardian to relay it via fleet.sh send.

  8. Wrap up. Summarize each agent’s outcome, citing transcripts (step on “understand what’s running”). Tear down with "$fleet" kill <fleet> only after the user has what they need, or leave it attached for them to inspect.

Supervision loop (delegated to guardians)

Each guardian runs its own poll/classify cycle (see the guardian persona). The orchestrator treats each contract line as an event:

  • needs-permission surface to chat, await user, relay decision through the originating guardian.
  • error surface to chat with the guardian’s quoted error line, await user instruction. Do not blindly retry auth or rate-limit errors.
  • done mark the pane complete in the orchestrator’s tally.
  • stuck surface to chat and let the user choose between kill, send a nudge, or wait.
  • relayed confirmation only; advance to the next event.

fleet.sh list <fleet> and fleet.sh capture <pane> remain available, but the guardian is their primary consumer. The orchestrator only reads them directly when a guardian is unreachable or the user explicitly overrides.

Tune idle sensitivity with FLEET_IDLE_SECS (default 30); the knob is read by each guardian, not the orchestrator.

Agent invocations

Spawn exactly one guardian per pane, immediately after step 5’s first send.

Claude Code (orchestrator inside Claude): use the Task tool.

Task({
  subagent_type: "guardian",
  description: "Guard pane %7 in fleet refactor-auth",
  prompt: "You are guarding pane %7 (agent: api, tool: claude) in fleet \
refactor-auth. fleet.sh is at ~/.agents/skills/orchestrate-agents/scripts/fleet.sh. \
Follow the guardian persona: poll list, capture on transition, emit one contract \
line per state change in the format GUARDIAN[%7]: <state> - <summary> - <action>. \
Never call send/spawn/kill/group on your own initiative."
})

Codex (orchestrator inside Codex): run inside the orchestrator session:

/agent guardian fleet=refactor-auth pane=%7 name=api tool=claude \
  fleet_sh=~/.agents/skills/orchestrate-agents/scripts/fleet.sh

or in a sidecar pane:

codex --profile guardian -- \
  "Guard pane %7 in fleet refactor-auth. fleet.sh=~/.agents/skills/orchestrate-agents/scripts/fleet.sh"

Both invocations brief the guardian with the four facts it needs: fleet name, pane id, agent display name, and the fleet.sh path.

Alerting (all four channels)

Guardians produce the alerts; the orchestrator is the megaphone. The in-chat channel is fed by the orchestrator forwarding the guardian’s contract line verbatim, and the orchestrator must NOT paraphrase guardian output before showing it to the user.

"$fleet" ping <fleet> "<message>" [pane] fires every channel at once:

  1. In-chat: the helper prints PING[...] to stderr. You must also surface the guardian’s contract line, unmodified, to the user in this conversation (the helper cannot write to chat itself). This is the channel that always matters.
  2. macOS notification via osascript (Notification Center, with sound).
  3. Terminal bell + status line on the pane that needs attention.
  4. Status dashboard pane (when opened in step 6) reflects the new state.

Ping when, and only when: an agent needs permission, errored, finished a workstream, or is stuck. Do not ping for normal progress.

Understand what is running

Liveness comes from tmux (list, capture). Substance comes from agentspec, which reads each tool’s own session store:

agentspec session list <claude|codex|copilot|gemini>     # id | time | first prompt
agentspec session export <tool> --last                   # full transcript as markdown

Use the transcript to disambiguate an idle agent (done vs stuck), to summarize what each agent accomplished, and to brief a follow-up agent with prior context.

Safety (default: prompt on, ping to approve)

  • Spawn agents bare so their normal permission prompts stay on. The orchestrator detects a blocked agent and pings the user; the user decides.
  • Do not pass --dangerously-skip-permissions, --yolo, --allow-all, or codex --dangerously-bypass-... unless the user explicitly asks for an unattended / full-auto run for this fleet. Auto-approve flags per tool are in the matrix.
  • Never approve a destructive or outward-facing action on an agent’s behalf. Surface it and wait.
  • One fleet per run; name it after the task. Tear down with kill when finished.
  • Each pane has exactly one guardian. The orchestrator must not approve, kill, or send to a pane without going through (or explicitly overriding with the user’s consent) that pane’s guardian. If a guardian crashes or its thread ends, treat the pane as unsupervised and ping the user before any further action on it.

Integration contract with guardian

Guardian-to-orchestrator messages are single lines, one per state transition, written to stdout:

GUARDIAN[<pane>]: <state> - <one-line summary> - <action>
  • <pane> is the tmux pane id (e.g. %7), never the agent’s display name.
  • <state> is exactly one of: running (only on first attach), needs-permission, error, idle, stuck, done, relayed.
  • <one-line summary> is a literal quote from fleet.sh capture when applicable, trimmed to fit one line; no paraphrase.
  • <action> is one of: awaiting user decision, awaiting orchestrator instruction, no action, relayed: "<verbatim string sent>".

Orchestrator obligations:

  • Surface every non-running line to chat verbatim.
  • For needs-permission and stuck, block on user input before instructing the guardian.
  • Relay user decisions by telling the originating guardian to fleet.sh send <pane> "<verbatim>" (guardian then emits a relayed line).
  • Guardians never call send, spawn, kill, or group on their own initiative; if a relay is needed, the orchestrator must instruct it.