/coordinate-external-agents

name: coordinate-external-agents
description: Coordinate independently operated external agents through durable handoffs. Use when work crosses hosts, sessions, accounts, services, queues, boards, pull requests, or human-owned task systems and cannot rely on an in-run subagent result.

Coordinate External Agents

Treat an external agent as an independently operated worker, not as a magical subagent. Starting it is not progress unless the coordinator can later discover its state and consume its report.

Workflow

1. Choose a durable shared surface: task record, issue, pull request, branch, worktree, artifact directory, shared document, queue, or host-native board. 2. Create a task record with the normal launch envelope plus access, retention, retry/resume, and result-delivery details. 3. Assign one owner, one coordinator, one artifact/write surface, and one final verification owner. Do not assume direct worker-to-worker messages exist. 4. Record status using `queued`, `running`, `blocked`, `needs-decision`, `completed`, `failed`, or `cancelled`; use the selected host's closest equivalent without hiding meaning. 5. Require a final report on the durable surface and notify the coordinator through the specified return route. 6. Verify the returned artifact, branch, change, or evidence before treating the task as complete.

Durable Work Rule

Use a queue, board, scheduled task, CI workflow, or service for work that must survive session closure, restart, human input, retry, multiple roles, or later audit. Do not represent a transient child-agent call as durable work.

Boundaries

• Keep credentials, private context, and mutation authority scoped to the

external worker's actual access surface.

• Use host-specific adapters only for mechanics. This skill owns the universal

handoff contract; it does not claim Codex, ChatGPT Work, Hermes, or another host shares one message or task API.