pilot-leader-election
Elect a coordinator with automatic failover using heartbeat-based leader election. Use this skill when: 1. A swarm needs a single coordinator for decision making 2. You need automatic failover when the current leader fails 3. You want to avoid split-brain with deterministic tie-breaking Do NOT use this skill when: - All agents need equal voting power (use pilot-consensus) - You need decentralized decision making (use pilot-gossip)
Source facts
- Repository
- TeoSlayer/pilot-skills
- Last source activity
- April 20, 2026 at 17:42
- Detected SKILL.md language
- English
- Stars
- 8
- Forks
- 2
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Source instructions · Read-only preview- name
- pilot-leader-election
- description
- Elect a coordinator with automatic failover using heartbeat-based leader election. Use this skill when: 1. A swarm needs a single coordinator for decision making 2. You need automatic failover when the current leader fails 3. You want to avoid split-brain with deterministic tie-breaking Do NOT use this skill when: - All agents need equal voting power (use pilot-consensus) - You need decentralized decision making (use pilot-gossip)
- tags
- ["pilot-protocol","leader-election","coordination","failover"]
- license
- AGPL-3.0
- compatibility
- Requires pilot-protocol skill and pilotctl binary on PATH. The daemon must be running (pilotctl daemon start).
- metadata
- {"author":"vulture-labs","version":"1.0","openclaw":{"requires":{"bins":"[Truncated]"},"homepage":"https://pilotprotocol.network"}}
- allowed-tools
- ["Bash"]
# pilot-leader-election
Implement leader election protocols with automatic failover detection.
## Commands
### Announce candidacy
```bash
pilotctl --json publish "registry-hostname" "election:$ELECTION_GROUP" \
--data "{\"type\":\"election\",\"candidate\":\"$AGENT_ID\",\"priority\":$PRIORITY,\"term\":$TERM}"
```
### Declare victory as leader
```bash
pilotctl --json publish "registry-hostname" "election:$ELECTION_GROUP" \
--data "{\"type\":\"leader\",\"leader\":\"$AGENT_ID\",\"term\":$TERM,\"elected_at\":\"$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)\"}"
```
### Send leader heartbeat
```bash
pilotctl --json publish "registry-hostname" "election:$ELECTION_GROUP" \
--data "{\"type\":\"heartbeat\",\"leader\":\"$AGENT_ID\",\"term\":$TERM,\"timestamp\":\"$(date -u +%s)\"}"
```
### Detect leader failure
```bash
LAST_HEARTBEAT=$(pilotctl --json inbox \
| jq -r '[.messages[] | select(.topic == "election:'$ELECTION_GROUP'" and .payload.type == "heartbeat")] | sort_by(.payload.timestamp) | last | .payload.timestamp')
ELAPSED=$(( $(date -u +%s) - LAST_HEARTBEAT ))
if [ "$ELAPSED" -gt 10 ]; then
echo "Leader timeout, starting election"
fi
```
## Workflow Example
Bully algorithm with priority-based election:
```bash
#!/bin/bash
ELECTION_GROUP="task-coordinator"
AGENT_ID=$(pilotctl --json info | jq -r '.node_id')
PRIORITY=$(echo -n "$AGENT_ID" | cksum | cut -d' ' -f1)
REGISTRY_HOST="registry.example.com"
# Announce candidacy
pilotctl --json publish "$REGISTRY_HOST" "election:$ELECTION_GROUP" \
--data "{\"type\":\"election\",\"candidate\":\"$AGENT_ID\",\"priority\":$PRIORITY,\"term\":$TERM}"
# Wait and check if highest priority
sleep 10
HIGHEST=$(pilotctl --json inbox \
| jq -r '[.messages[] | select(.topic == "election:'$ELECTION_GROUP'" and .payload.type == "election")] | sort_by(.payload.priority) | last | .payload.candidate')
if [ "$HIGHEST" = "$AGENT_ID" ]; then
pilotctl --json publish "$REGISTRY_HOST" "election:$ELECTION_GROUP" \
--data "{\"type\":\"leader\",\"leader\":\"$AGENT_ID\",\"term\":$TERM}"
fi
```
## Dependencies
Requires pilot-protocol skill, jq, and cksum.
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