Orchestration Agent Skill

Orca Orchestration

This file is a discovery stub, not the usage guide. The full, version-matched Orca

orchestration reference is served by the orca binary itself — kept out of this file on

purpose so it can never drift from the binary that will actually run your commands.

Engage Orca orchestration whenever you need structured multi-agent coordination: threaded

messages, blocking ask/reply flows, task dispatch, worker_done/escalation waits, task DAGs,

decision gates, coordinator loops, or decomposing work across agents. Use the orca-cli skill

instead for full ownership handoffs ("hand off", "handoff", "handover", "give this to

another agent", "another worktree") when the user did not ask to supervise, monitor, wait

for results, or coordinate a DAG — and for ordinary terminal control, shell commands,

worktree management, and the built-in browser. Coordination requires real Orca runtime

state; never substitute a non-Orca subagent tool.

Resolve the CLI for this session

Choose the executable once and reuse it for every later command:

• If the ORCA_CLI_COMMAND environment variable is set, use its value. Orca exports this

for managed WSL sessions.

• Otherwise, in a dev checkout whose session exposes ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT, use orca-dev.
• Otherwise, on Linux outside an Orca-managed terminal, use orca-ide. Never run bare

orca there — outside Orca's terminals it normally resolves to the

GNOME Orca screen reader (/usr/bin/orca) and starts speech on the user's machine.

• Otherwise, use orca.

Below, ORCA is a placeholder for the executable you resolved. Substitute it before

running anything; do not create a shell variable or run ORCA literally. This works the

same way in POSIX shells, PowerShell, and cmd.exe.

If the selected executable cannot run, report its exact error and stop. Do not fall through

to another executable, which could silently target a different Orca build.

Load the full guide before running Orca commands

ORCA skills get orchestration

That prints the complete, version-matched guide for the exact binary that will handle your

next commands — task creation and dispatch, injected lifecycle preambles, worker_done

authority, decision gates, and coordinator loops. Read it first, then run the specific

command you need.

Don't guess subcommands or flags from memory or from a cached copy of this stub. They

change between Orca releases, and this file deliberately no longer lists them. Confirm the

app is up with ORCA status --json (start it with ORCA open --json if needed), and

prefer --json for agent-driven calls.

If an older Orca does not recognize skills get

Use this fallback only when the selected binary explicitly reports that skills get is an

unknown command. Another failure is not proof of an older binary; report it rather than

guessing or changing executables. For a confirmed pre-guide binary, use only this bounded,

read-only bootstrap to orient. Do not dead-end and do not invent commands:

ORCA status --json
ORCA orchestration task-list --json
ORCA terminal list --json

Then tell the user that updating Orca restores the full, version-matched guide via

ORCA skills get orchestration. Beyond these commands, ask the user rather than guessing a

command surface this older binary may not support.