Home / mvschwarz / openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/forming-an-openrig-mental-model/SKILL.md · GitHub

forming-an-openrig-mental-model skillA

forming-an-openrig-mental-model is agent-read markdown (skill) from mvschwarz/openrig: Use when the system around you does not make sense yet: you just booted into a seat and do not know how the pieces fit; someone said rig, pod, seat, fleet, topology, or slice and you are not certain what they mean here; you are unsure what kind of rig you are in or what it is for; you do not know how skills reach you or where context comes from; or you are about to act on a guess about how OpenRig works. Gives the runtime mental model fast, so you stop guessing..

Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.

What the file says

# Forming an OpenRig Mental Model

You're new to OpenRig — or returning after time away — and you need to
quickly understand what kind of system this is, what your seat is, and what
the moves are. This skill is the fast on-ramp.

For depth, read the canonical reference docs the skill points to. This
skill's job is to get you *oriented* — accurate enough to operate, fast
enough to be useful — not to replace the canonical docs.

---

## The 60-second mental model

OpenRig is a **local control plane for multi-agent coding topologies**. You
declare a topology of agents in YAML, boot it with one command, and OpenRig
manages tmux sessions, harness lifecycles, transcripts, snapshots, and
restoration. When the system goes down, OpenRig snapshots; when it comes
back, agents resume their conversations.

The product loop:

```
down (auto-snapshot) → up <rig-name> (auto-restore) → work → repeat
```

The unit of work is the **rig** — a topology of agents working together as
a single system.

---

## The four-layer model (where you live)

Everything in agent engineering happens at one of four layers. **OpenRig
operates at Layer 3.**

| Layer | Name | Analogy | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
…

Read the whole file at its exact version.

How to install

Latest version
mdr add mvschwarz/openrig/forming-an-openrig-mental-model@git:20260907.9006fc5
Exact content
mdr add mvschwarz/openrig/forming-an-openrig-mental-model@sha256:cff1ca1640fec65b

Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.

Badge

mdr badge

[![mdr](https://markdownregistry.com/badge/art_m4csogq5j7fwjqqu.svg)](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_m4csogq5j7fwjqqu)

0 badge views in 30 days

Versions

versioncommittedcommitsizeaudit
git:20260907.9006fc5 latest2026-09-07 9006fc5 15,933 BA view · diff
git:20260904.e952d4e2026-09-04 e952d4e 15,826 BA view · diff
git:20260830.034606a2026-08-30 034606a 15,814 BA view · diff
git:20260826.bdc404f2026-08-26 bdc404f 16,068 BA view · diff
git:20260805.864cea62026-08-05 864cea6 15,984 BA view

Audit of the latest version

A  17 of 17 checks passed. Deterministic, no model, same answer every run.
  • pass: Frontmatter block present
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a name
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a description
  • pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (15933 bytes)
  • pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
  • pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
  • pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
  • pass: No credential-shaped string
  • pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
  • pass: No text hidden with inline styles
  • pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
  • pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
  • pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
  • pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
  • pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
  • pass: No link to a raw IP address
  • pass: No script tag

Source

GitHub

mvschwarz/openrig · 362 stars · license Apache-2.0 · pushed 2026-09-25 · branch main

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_m4csogq5j7fwjqqu
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=mvschwarz/openrig/forming-an-openrig-mental-model
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/cff1ca1640fec65b180539a2c6c3c9044d73aa02f9d13d0d24763446ac974da0

Your agent does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.

More from mvschwarz/openrig

DESIGN.md@docs design
mvschwarz/openrig · docs/DESIGN.md
git:20260511.2c2e6ba · audit A · 362 stars
agent-operated-software skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/agent-operated-software/SKILL.md · Use when designing, building, operating, or diagnosing an ongoing application whose live backend or control loop…
git:20260908.e4e15c6 · audit A · 362 stars
agent-operated-workflows skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/agent-operated-workflows/SKILL.md · Use when a bounded real-world procedure has a deterministic happy path but brownfield, variable, or partially knowable…
git:20260907.9006fc5 · audit A · 362 stars
applying-a-permission-policy skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/applying-a-permission-policy/SKILL.md · Use when a user asks an agent to configure OpenRig command permissions, reduce repeated native approval prompts, or…
git:20260925.efde04f · audit A · 362 stars
claude-compaction-restore skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/claude-compaction-restore/SKILL.md · Use when a Claude Code session has just compacted, is about to compact, reached context limit, resumed after /compact…
git:20260907.3949b26 · audit A · 362 stars
delegating-work skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/delegating-work/SKILL.md · Use when you have a task and must decide WHO does it — yourself, a spawned subagent, or another agent in the topology…
git:20260805.864cea6 · audit A · 362 stars
loading-addressable-markdown skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/loading-addressable-markdown/SKILL.md · Use when a mission, slice, dashboard, or task references Markdown as path#h2-slug or path#h2-slug/h3-slug outside the…
git:20260901.0b86028 · audit A · 362 stars
messaging-the-human skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/messaging-the-human/SKILL.md · Use when project policy calls for a human decision or update, a human delivery is pending or failed, or a reply must…
git:20260910.0df014e · audit A · 362 stars
mission-slice-sop skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/mission-slice-sop/SKILL.md · Use when starting, building, handing off, restoring, or closing a mission or slice under the default lightweight SDLC.
git:20260906.ac21bc2 · audit A · 362 stars
openrig-operating-model skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/openrig-operating-model/SKILL.md · Use when you do not know WHERE something belongs: you learned a lesson and are unsure which file takes it; you are…
git:20260908.e4e15c6 · audit A · 362 stars
openrig-skills skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/openrig-skills/SKILL.md · Use when you're operating OpenRig and need the right skill or context for fleet recovery, seat handover, new-seat…
git:20260925.4940c10 · audit A · 362 stars
openrig-user skill
mvschwarz/openrig · packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/openrig-user/SKILL.md · Use when a specific `rig` command, subcommand, or flag is already known and you need its exact syntax, JSON shape…
git:20260907.6271b26 · audit B · 362 stars

Every file in mvschwarz/openrig

Browse by kind, by grade A, or by owner.