codex-agent-cleanup

name	codex-agent-cleanup
description	Routine maintenance for Codex sessions: monitor queue state, close completed sub-agents, resume or escalate active work, and keep agent capacity available.
license	Proprietary
compatibility	agentic-engineers framework v5.10+
metadata	{"author":"agentic-engineers","version":"1.0.0","category":"orchestration","role":"orchestrator","model":"claude-haiku-4.5","effort":"medium","thinking":false}

codex-agent-cleanup

Codex sessions can accumulate completed sub-agents that keep slots occupied. This skill keeps the orchestrator healthy by routinely:

• checking queue state
• closing completed agents
• resuming active or orphaned agents when needed
• escalating or re-routing stuck work
• keeping the queue clear enough to spawn new work

When To Use

• After sub-agents finish
• Before spawning additional parallel work
• When queue capacity feels unexpectedly constrained
• When a session has many completed delegates still open

Workflow

1. Inspect the queue and active agents.
2. Close completed agents immediately.
3. Check for running agents that have stalled or need attention.
4. Resume only agents that are still relevant to the current task.
5. Escalate or re-route blocked work instead of leaving it open.
6. Re-check queue state after cleanup.

Operating Rules

• Prefer closure over leaving finished agents open.
• Do not close agents that still have unfinished, relevant work.
• Do not duplicate cleanup already performed in the same turn.
• Keep the queue in a state that allows new delegation.
• If queue layout or state is unclear, inspect the local queue filesystem first.

Signals To Watch

• Completed HANDBACKs still open
• Long-lived processing/ entries with no forward progress
• Queue directories with stale or orphaned artifacts
• Agent pool saturation during parallel fan-out

Practical Checks

• close_agent for completed sub-agents
• wait_agent for active delegates that are still in flight
• queue inspection under ~/.agentic-engineers/
• local repo state before spawning more parallel work

Good Defaults

• Clean up completed agents before starting new parallel tasks.
• Treat queue hygiene as part of normal Codex orchestration, not optional housekeeping.
• Prefer small cleanup cycles instead of waiting for a backlog.

Self-Improvement

This skill participates in the framework's continuous improvement cycle (see skill-improvement-feedback).

When you use codex-agent-cleanup during a task, include a skill_feedback entry in your HANDBACK to help improve it over time:

skill_feedback:
  - skill_name: codex-agent-cleanup
    effectiveness_score: 0.85        # required: 0.0–1.0
    clarity_score: 0.90              # optional
    coverage_gaps:
      - "Specific scenario the skill did not address"
    improvement_suggestions:
      - "Concrete change that would have helped"
    usage_context: "One sentence on how you used this skill"

Positive feedback is as valuable as critical feedback. Three or more feedback items for this skill automatically trigger an improvement task.