Agent Orchestration

Spawn and manage hierarchical agents with role-aware prompts, minimal context, and predictable result contracts. This skill is optimized for orchestrator → specialist → helper workflows.

Quick Start

# One-call research (waits + collects automatically)
bash skills/agent-orchestration/scripts/agent-run.sh researcher \
  "Summarize this repo in 3 bullets. Cite only files you read."

# Parallel implementers (fire-and-forget, wait for all, auto-merge)
bash skills/agent-orchestration/scripts/agent-run-batch.sh implementer \
  --tasks-file ./tasks.txt \
  --merge

Orchestrator Flow (Required)

Follow this sequence for non-trivial tasks:

1. Get user prompt (requirements, constraints, success criteria)
2. Search (Researcher: codebase search first, then web search if needed)
3. Plan (Orchestrator: phases + workstreams)
4. Implement (Implementer)
5. Test (Tester)
6. Document (Documenter)
7. Verify (Reviewer)

Batch responsibility: The orchestrator owns conflict resolution and ensuring the original prompt is upheld. If a specialist spawns a helper, that specialist owns the same responsibilities for their subtask.

Role Identities (Specialists)

Use these identities verbatim so subagents stay scoped:

• Researcher: Use codebase search first, then Tavily if needed. Write answer.md and cite sources. No code changes.
• Implementer: Apply code changes only within scope. No tests unless requested.
• Tester: Run tests, fix failures, report commands + outcomes.
• Documenter: Update docs only. Follow existing docs style and use docs-check + docs-write guidance.
• Reviewer: Verify requirements, tests, docs, and report gaps.

Each role must return the references/result-contract.md summary.

Role templates include a short Personality line (automatically injected) so specialists remain consistent and predictable.

Data & Context Flow (Internal Map)

1. User Prompt → Orchestrator captures requirements and constraints.
2. Orchestrator Brief → references/orchestrator-brief.md defines phases and workstreams.
3. Role + Task → Wrapper builds role header + task + guardrails.
4. prompt.md (single context file) → Written to worktree and mirrored to .ada/data/agents/runs/<runId>/prompt.md.
5. Execution → Provider runs inside worktree with access to prompt.md.
6. Outputs → answer.md (research) or code changes (work).
7. Result Contract → Specialist returns references/result-contract.md summary.
8. Collect → agent-collect.sh generates patch + artifacts.
9. Merge (optional) → agent-run.sh --merge / agent-run-batch.sh --merge.

Prompt Composition (Required)

All subagent prompts must include a role header before the task. The role-aware wrappers (agent-run.sh, agent-run-batch.sh, agent-spawn-role.sh) build this automatically.

Prompt structure used by wrappers:

# Subagent Role

- Role: <Role Name>
- Workstream ID: <R1|I1|T1|D1|V1|H1>
- Parent Run ID: <parent|none>
- Mode: <research|work>
- Runtime: <await|ff>

## Role Instructions

<role-specific instructions>

## Role Boundaries (Other roles handle)

<concise list of responsibilities owned by other roles>

## Task Brief

<task or task brief contents>

## Orchestrator Brief (optional)

<orchestrator brief>

## Context Pack (optional)

<context snippets>

## Output Contract

<result contract>

## Guardrails

- Stay within scope. Do not change unrelated files or tasks.
- No lateral communication between specialists. Report only to the parent.
- Level 2 may spawn multiple helpers (Level 3) for tightly scoped subtasks. Helpers must not spawn further agents.
- Research mode must write answer.md.

Wrappers also persist the full role + task context to prompt.md in both the worktree and the run directory so agents can re-read it.

If you bypass wrappers and call agent-spawn.sh directly, you must prefix the prompt with the role header and contract yourself. No additional context file is created automatically.

Context Passing

Downward (orchestrator → specialist):

• references/orchestrator-brief.md
• references/subagent-task-brief.md
• Minimal context pack via --context-file

Upward (specialist → orchestrator):

• references/result-contract.md

Execution Modes Matrix

Core Commands (Recommended)

agent-run.sh (one-call)

bash skills/agent-orchestration/scripts/agent-run.sh <role> "<task>" [options]

• Waits and collects automatically
• --merge auto-merges work-mode changes
• --quick-merge is an alias for --merge in this wrapper

agent-run-batch.sh (parallel)

bash skills/agent-orchestration/scripts/agent-run-batch.sh <role> --tasks-file <path> [options]

• Spawns many tasks in parallel (runtime=ff by default)
• Waits for all, collects results, then merges if --merge (or --quick-merge alias) is set

agent-spawn-role.sh (role-aware wrapper)

bash skills/agent-orchestration/scripts/agent-spawn-role.sh \
  --role <researcher|implementer|tester|documenter|reviewer|helper> \
  --workstream <id> \
  --task "<task>" \
  [--mode <work|research>] \
  [--runtime <await|ff>]

Auto-Merge Guidance

• For single tasks: use agent-run.sh --merge
• For parallel tasks: use agent-run-batch.sh --merge
• Raw agent-spawn.sh --quick-merge only affects cleanup; it does not merge on its own
• Use --auto-resolve only if you're comfortable preferring agent changes (-X theirs) on conflicts

Rescue & Follow-up

If agent-collect.sh cannot detect results after rescue attempts, it marks the run as failed and emits:

• rescue.md with diagnostics and next steps
• rescue.sh to re-run the same prompt with identical provider/mode

Rescue backoff can be tuned via RESCUE_MAX_DELAY and RESCUE_JITTER_PCT.

Hierarchy Rules

• Level 1 (Orchestrator): Owns plan, task allocation, verification, merge decisions
• Level 2 (Specialists): Execute assigned scope; may spawn multiple Level 3 helpers
• Level 3 (Helpers): Tightly scoped tasks only; no further spawning
• No lateral communication between specialists

Templates

• references/orchestrator-brief.md
• references/subagent-task-brief.md
• references/result-contract.md
• references/verification-checklist.md

References

• references/commands.md - Full command surface
• references/workflows.md - Detailed flow + role workflow
• references/examples.md - Usage examples
• references/operations.md - Architecture notes + troubleshooting
• references/role-templates.md - Role prompts