| name | orca |
| description | Orchestrator mode — the default working mode of this project, not a toggle to find. The main agent does no task work itself: every unit goes to a role-framed subagent that inherits its model and effort, at most 5 in parallel unless overridden. Load it for the contract (roles, width, write scopes, verification), when the user says '/orca', 'orca mode', 'orchestrator mode', 'orca an/aus', 'delegate everything', or asks what the width is set to. '/orca off' drops to plain behavior for this session only. |
| argument-hint | [on|off|N|status] |
Orca — Orchestrator Mode
When to Use
/orca (reports state and width) · /orca on|off|status · /orca 10 — the user asks what the mode is set to, or changes it- "orca mode", "orchestrator mode", "orca an/aus", "ab jetzt alles delegieren", "delegate everything"
- Session start, when
SCRATCHPAD.md still carries an Orca line from an earlier session or from before a compaction
Not this skill: choosing a subagent_type for one assignment while already orchestrating. That is the type/role
table in CLAUDE.md → Subagents, with the longer form in agent_docs/review_process.md → Subagent Delegation.
State
On by default, width 5. Every session starts orchestrating; there is no activation step. The width is the only
number to think about, and only if the default is wrong for the task.
| Argument | Effect |
|---|
| (none) | Report state and width, change nothing — same as status |
N — any number (/orca 10, /orca 2) | Set the parallel width for this session |
off | Plain Claude Code behavior for the rest of this session |
on | Back to orchestrating, at the last width set (5 if never set) |
status | Report state and width, change nothing |
Off is a command, never a default. The next session orchestrates again, because nothing carries off forward —
not this file, not CLAUDE.md, not SCRATCHPAD.md. Only a non-default width is worth persisting: write it to
SCRATCHPAD.md → Current Work as **Orca** — width <N> (<date>) so a compaction cannot lose it. A line there is
authority, not staleness — obey it and say in one sentence that the width came from the scratchpad; the user has
/orca 5 if it is wrong. No line means width 5. (Correcting the line to the default instead would throw away the one
thing it exists to protect: a same-day compaction and a same-day earlier session are indistinguishable from the date.)
The contract
- Every unit of task work is delegated. No exception. Reading a file for its content, searching, planning,
editing, writing tests, running checks, reviewing — all of it happens in a subagent, including the units that
would plainly be faster done directly. "Too small to delegate" is not a judgment this mode makes;
/orca off is.
- Each assignment names a role, from the roster in CLAUDE.md → Subagents. The role is the lens the brief
frames —
architect, implementer, reviewer, domain, product, docs, security — and the wave report
names it. Seat the roles the change actually calls for, never a standing panel and never two agents with the same
lens: agreement between identical lenses is not evidence. A code change always seats reviewer, and never the
agent that wrote it — a fresh reading beats an author verifying the intent it already holds.
- The orchestrator keeps four things, and all four are decisions rather than work: decomposition and assignment ·
read-only verification of what comes back (
git status, git diff, reading the changed files) · integration and
its gates (commit, push, /pr, /ci, /rollback, merge, deploy) · the report to the user. A gate handed to a
subagent is a gate that answers itself — the subagent holds the tool and has nobody to ask.
- Subagents inherit the orchestrator's quality — by omission, not by setting. Leave the model parameter off and
the subagent runs the session's model; leave the effort / reasoning parameter off, where the surface has one, and
it runs the session's effort. Never pass a smaller model, never pass a lower effort, never route work to a cheaper
agent to save tokens. Two places where inheritance does not happen on its own: a repo-local
.claude/agents/*.md
whose frontmatter pins a model: overrides it — pass the session's model explicitly for that agent type or do not
use it; and subagent_type: fork always inherits the parent model whatever else is passed.
- Width: 5 in parallel unless overridden. Independent assignments go out in a single message, up to N; the rest waits
for a free slot. Dependent work is sequenced — never parallelized in the hope that the order works out.
- Disjoint write scopes. Two subagents in the same wave never hold write access to the same file. Split by file,
or sequence, or give each one its own git worktree () where the surface offers it.
Rules
- A failed subagent is a re-assignment, not a takeover. Sharpen or split the assignment and send it again; the
orchestrator never "just fixes it quickly" itself. Third failure on the same unit →
.claude/skills/stuck/SKILL.md.
- Unattended runs (
CLAUDE_CODE_REMOTE=true) keep the mode and keep the ban on ending a turn with a question —
subagents cannot ask either, so the assignment states the assumption it runs under. See CLAUDE.md → Autonomy.
- Skills stay in force. A skill the user invokes while the mode is on is followed by the orchestrator; the work
that skill asks for is what gets delegated.
- This is the subagent contract, nothing wider. It does not by itself authorize heavier multi-agent machinery
(workflow-style fan-out over dozens of agents) — that stays an explicit user request.
- Cost is real and already decided. The mode multiplies token use and adds latency per unit of work; that buys
parallel width and a main context that stays clean. It is the project's default, so do not re-litigate it per task
and do not announce it every turn — mention it only if the user asks or if a task is genuinely the wrong shape for
it, and then say so once with the recommendation, not as a question.
Report
Close every wave with:
### Orca — wave <n> (<k>/<N> parallel)
| Assignment | Role | subagent_type | Scope | Result | Verified |
|------------|------|---------------|-------|--------|----------|
| <what> | <role from the roster> | <type> | <files> | done / partial / failed | diff read ✅ / ❌ |
Next: <next wave / integration step / "nothing — reporting to user">
