oa-orchestration-delegate

name	oa-orchestration-delegate
description	CLI reference for oa delegate — automatic orchestrator+workers spawning. Use when a task needs hierarchical decomposition with an orchestrator managing parallel workers. Activates for: oa delegate, delegate task, orchestrator, max-workers, --orchestrator-model.
user-invocable	false
disable-model-invocation	true
allowed-tools	Bash(oa *)

Critical Rules

• ALWAYS use oa delegate instead of oa run when the task needs autonomous decomposition — the orchestrator handles subtask breakdown so you don't have to (D-051).
• NEVER skip --model for workers — without it the default may change between oa-cli versions; always specify claude/sonnet, claude/opus, or claude/haiku.
• NEVER use oa delegate from inside another agent — nested spawning creates invisible agents outside oa status (L-009).

Decision Tree

Task needs execution?
├── Single isolated task, you define the scope → oa run
├── Multi-step pipeline, you define the steps  → oa pipeline
└── Complex task, let AI decompose it          → oa delegate

Use oa delegate when the decomposition itself is non-trivial and you want an orchestrator agent to analyze, break down, and coordinate workers automatically.

Instructions

1. Run oa start and verify session with oa status before delegating.
2. Choose worker model (--model) and orchestrator model (--orchestrator-model).
3. Set --max-workers to control concurrency (default: 5).
4. Run oa delegate "<task>" — the orchestrator spawns and manages workers.
5. Monitor with oa status and collect results via oa collect <name>.

Patterns

Pattern 1: Minimal delegate

oa delegate "Analyze all Python files in /project and write a report" \
  --name analysis-orchestrator \
  --model claude/sonnet \
  --orchestrator-model claude/opus

Pattern 2: Full flag reference

oa delegate "task description"
  --name base-name              # base name for the orchestrator agent
  --model claude/sonnet         # REQUIRED: model for worker agents
  --orchestrator-model claude/opus  # orchestrator model (default: claude/opus)
  --max-workers 5               # max concurrent workers per batch (default: 5)

Pattern 3: Controlled batch size

oa delegate "Process 20 documents in /data/" \
  --name doc-processor \
  --model claude/haiku \
  --orchestrator-model claude/sonnet \
  --max-workers 3

Anti-Patterns

• Bad: oa delegate "small single-step task" — orchestrator overhead not justified for simple work; use oa run instead.
• Bad: oa delegate "task" --model claude — bare model name may change; always specify claude/sonnet, claude/haiku, or claude/opus.
• Bad: Calling oa delegate inside an agent prompt — spawns invisible nested agents; delegate only from the orchestrator session.

References

• Related: oa-orchestration-spawn, oa-orchestration-pipeline, oa-state-lifecycle