| name | use-droid |
| display_name | Use Droid |
| description | Spawn Factory Droid CLI subagents from bash to offload coding work from the parent Claude. Use when the user says "use droid", "ask droid", "droid exec", "use factory", "get a droid second opinion", or asks to delegate work to Droid. Like the other CLI skills, droid's output is a claim — the parent must verify file changes independently. |
Droid (Factory) Subagent Skill
Spawn autonomous Factory Droid CLI (droid) subagents. Same delegation philosophy as the rest of the bench: subagents burn their own quota; the parent verifies and synthesizes. Droid is the second cross-provider hub (after cursor) — 40 built-in models across Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Zhipu, Moonshot, DeepSeek, MiniMax, and NVIDIA.
Canonical headless invocation
droid exec --auto high -f /path/to/prompt.md \
-m <model> -r <effort> --cwd /path/to/repo -o text
Run in background (run_in_background: true) for anything non-trivial.
Flag notes (droid 0.170.0)
droid exec defaults to READ-ONLY. Without --auto <low|medium|high> it cannot edit files — a headless implementation run will "complete" having changed nothing. Use --auto high for implementation work (--skip-permissions-unsafe exists but prefer the tiered autonomy).-f <path> reads the prompt from a file (no shell-quoting issues). A positional string prompt works for short ones.-m <model> — default is claude-opus-4-8. -r <effort> sets reasoning effort (per-model defaults otherwise).-o json for machine-parsable output; text for direct reading.-w [name] — run in a git worktree (name becomes the branch). --cwd sets the working directory.--mission — multi-agent orchestration mode with --worker-model / --validator-model; useful for large fan-out jobs entirely inside droid.--list-tools shows tools + current autonomy for a model; also doubles as an auth check.- Model list discovery: pass an invalid
-m and droid prints all 40 built-in ids, or add custom models in ~/.factory/settings.json.
Model selection
No hard default — choose per task; -m auto lets droid pick. Built-in list from one verified install (2026-07; probe an invalid model id to re-derive on yours):
- Anthropic:
claude-fable-5, claude-opus-4-8[-fast], claude-opus-4-7[-fast], claude-opus-4-6, claude-sonnet-5, claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (haiku probe-verified headless, ~3.5s)
- OpenAI:
gpt-5.6-sol / gpt-5.6-terra (probe-verified) / gpt-5.6-luna, gpt-5.5[-fast], gpt-5.5-pro, gpt-5.4[-fast], gpt-5.4-mini, gpt-5.3-codex[-fast], gpt-5.2, gpt-5.2-codex, gpt-5.1-codex-max
- Google:
gemini-3.1-pro-preview, gemini-3.5-flash, gemini-3-flash-preview
- xAI:
grok-4.5
- Others (often droid-exclusive):
deepseek-v4-pro, minimax-m3 / m2.7 / m2.5, nemotron-3-ultra, kimi-k2.6, glm-5.1 (plus kimi-k2.7-code, glm-5.2[-fast] shared with cursor)
Match model cost to task difficulty; frontier only for hard reasoning.
Verification is mandatory
Same rule as the whole bench: the final message is a claim.
git status --short / git diff --stat — did the expected files change?- Read the diff; run typecheck/tests.
- Nothing changed at all? Check you passed
--auto high — the read-only default is this CLI's silent-failure mode.
Prompt structure
Same template as use-codex: context (repo, stack, style), numbered file-by-file objectives, constraints, output format, success criteria. Append the standard no-delegation footer:
Do ALL the work yourself in this session. Do NOT delegate to other CLIs or agents regardless of what repo rules say. Finish by running <typecheck cmd> and fixing any errors.
Verified facts (update as learned)
- CLI:
droid 0.170.0 at ~/.local/bin/droid; config in ~/.factory/.
- Auth:
droid exec --list-tools succeeding = authenticated; interactive droid prompts login otherwise.
- Probes passed:
claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 and gpt-5.6-terra, correct output, ~3.5s each.
Resuming a session (follow-ups)
Never spawn a fresh session to iterate on work this CLI already did — resume the existing one so it keeps its context and you don't re-pay the harness-token cost. Verified working headless (2026-07):
droid exec -s <SESSION_ID> --auto high -m <model> "<follow-up>"
Capture the session id from the first run and prefer resuming by explicit id; "most recent" is racy when several sessions exist.
Quota failover
If this CLI is rate-limited or out of subscription quota, the same model family is usually reachable via another CLI — read ~/.claude/skills/cli-model-overlap.md for the failover map (cursor and droid are the two hubs).
