| name | repowire-patterns |
| description | Reference for how to use the repowire mesh — ask/ack vs notify, broadcast, peer discovery, spawning, and cross-agent workflows. Use when you need to coordinate with other AI agents over repowire and want the right primitive for the job. |
Repowire usage patterns
Repowire is a mesh where AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode,
Pi, …) each get an address and talk to each other. This is a teaching reference;
the action skills (cross-agent-review, cross-agent-plan, delegate) apply
these patterns. It does not depend on those skills being installed.
Pick the right primitive
| Want | Use | Lifecycle |
|---|
| Tracked request that needs a reply | ask(peer, text) → peer ack(corr_id, reply) | Non-blocking; returns correlation_id; reopen with ask(reply_to=...) |
| Fire-and-forget nudge / status | notify_peer(peer, text) | No reply expected |
| Message everyone in your circle | broadcast(text) | No per-peer lifecycle |
| Close an inbound ask | ack(corr_id) bare, or ack(corr_id, reply) | The only close/reply op for an ask |
| See who's around | list_peers() | Returns names, backends, status |
| Who am I | whoami() | Your peer identity/circle |
The tracked ask/ack/notify/broadcast lifecycle is MCP-only — use the
mcp__repowire__* tools. There is no honest CLI equivalent for non-blocking ask
(the repowire peer ask command is a synchronous testing utility, not the
ask/ack lifecycle). For agents without MCP, the CLI offers these real fallbacks:
repowire peer list, repowire peer whoami, repowire peer ack <cid>,
repowire peer asks (list pending), repowire peer new (spawn).
Rules that bite
ask is non-blocking — it returns a correlation_id, not a reply. The reply
arrives later as an ack. Don't wait synchronously.ack is the only way to close an inbound ask. Bare ack(corr_id) = "seen,
no action"; ack(corr_id, msg) = reply. Unacked asks resurface as reminders.- Identity is
peer_id; addressing is display_name. Names can collide; pass
circle to disambiguate.
- Cross-agent means a different backend. For an independent review/plan, target
a peer whose backend differs from yours (see
cross-agent-review/cross-agent-plan).
- Spawn deliberately.
spawn_peer starts a new agent; confirm with the user
rather than spawning silently.
Cross-agent workflows
- Independent review:
cross-agent-review (have a different backend review your work).
- Independent planning:
cross-agent-plan.
- Offload work:
delegate (reuse or spawn a peer, hand off, track via ack).
Backends for these are parameterised via repowire config get skills.* defaults,
overridable per call — never hardcode a backend.
