orchestrate git:20261023.5713e74A

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---
name: orchestrate
description: "Use when an agent orchestrates other agents on a piece of work, of any kind (a plan, a task swarm, a brainswarm): settling the charter, dispatching each member with its brief and role, watching them and steering a drift. Not for the duties one kind adds (orchestrate-plan for a plan, swarm for a task swarm, brainswarm for a seat swarm), and not for the board they talk on (swarm-board)."
---

# Orchestrate

**This session holds the kind's document, its charter, the briefs and the decisions; members do the work.** A member never edits the kind's document or its charter.

## The charter

Every kind has a charter in its own document, approved in chat. Read `references/charter.md` before the first question of a charter; the kind's skill names its fields.

## Dispatch

- **One member per unit of work**, on a subagent definition carrying the charter's model and effort; the dispatch passes its model, and its effort where the `Agent` tool takes one; otherwise effort is carried by the subagent definition the dispatch names (`effort:` in its frontmatter). A dispatch naming neither inherits the session's level. **When no subagent definition carries the charter's model and effort, say so to the person before dispatching**, naming the nearest one; never dispatch on another level silently.
- **The member's agent follows its kind, never `general-purpose`**: a plan's slice on the plugin's `plan-worker`, a task swarm's worker on `swarm-worker`, a brainswarm seat on `brainswarm-seat`, any verification pass (a validator seat, one pass, the proof of a new verify skill) on `verifier` (`subagent_type: "swarmstorm:<agent>"`). It holds the rules every brief of that kind would otherwise have to repeat.
- **The brief is the only thing sent.** Read `references/brief.md` before the first dispatch.
- **Check blockers before every dispatch.**
- **Every ready member's `Agent` call goes in one message**, each in the background, nothing between them.
- **A member whose kind needs a worktree** gets `isolation: "worktree"`, its own install, and its base named in the brief. On Windows, set `git config core.longpaths true` before the first worktree removal.

## Roles

A member given a role (a seat, an expert) gets it in a few sentences. Read `references/roles.md` before writing a member's role.

## Watching

The completion notification ends a member; it does not tell you the work is healthy. On a swarm board, the board's member states and events replace the digest below (the `swarm-board` skill's orchestrator side). Otherwise, while members work:

- **Every few minutes, run the digest** and look at it: `node <skill-dir>/scripts/watch-agents.mjs <subagents-dir> [--label <id>=<member>] [--forbidden '<regex>']`. One line per live member: calls, idle time, last tool, last words. Never open a transcript whole; it exhausts this session's context. Transcripts live under `<claude home>/projects/<project>/<session id>/subagents/`.
- **Report only what is news**: a stale member (no new call in ten minutes), a `BREACH` of the brief's boundary, work clearly outside the member's document. `--forbidden` is the brief's boundary as a regex anchored on a command's verb, never a path.
- **Steer only a drift from the brief**: one `SendMessage` naming the brief line it left. A member that drifts again is stopped and re-dispatched with the brief amended. Decisions its document leaves to the member are its own.

## Findings

**Weigh every finding a member returns before anything acts on it** (a verifier's, a reviewer's, a worker's): you know the document, its decisions and the inputs, which the member may not. **Findings travel as a table in a message, never in a document**: on a board, the member's post to you; in a dispatch, its return. **Your answer is the same table, two columns added**, `judgement` (stands, weight changed, a question for the person, not a fault) and `reason`: on a board your next post, in reply, before anything is dispatched; with no board, in the brief of the next member and of the one that looks again, and to the person in chat. Only the rows that stand reach a fix; the member that found them looks again only at those.

## A member that stops on a finding

It is done. Fix the kind's document or the member's; never re-brief it past what it found.