octo

🐙 Claude Octopus

Every AI model has blind spots. Claude Octopus supports twelve external provider integrations — Codex, Antigravity CLI, Copilot, Qwen, Ollama, Perplexity, OpenRouter, OrcaRouter, OpenCode, Cursor CLI, Grok, and Kimi Code — alongside the built-in Claude Code host, with consensus gates that flag disagreements before you ship.

Claude-native first, Octopus for escalation. Use Claude-native /init, /review, and /security-review when Claude is enough. Use Octopus when you want multiple model opinions, adversarial review, or stricter multi-LLM workflows.

Claude Octopus is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.

🐙 Research, build, review, and ship — with twelve external providers checking the host's work. Claude-native handles the ordinary path. Octopus remains dormant until you explicitly run /octo:*, then handles the escalated path. A 75% consensus gate catches disagreements before they reach production.

🧠 Remembers across sessions. Integrates with claude-mem and agentmemory for persistent memory — past decisions, research, and context survive session boundaries.

⚡ Spec in, software out. Dark Factory mode takes a spec and autonomously runs the full pipeline — research, define, develop, deliver. You review the output, not every step.

🔄 Choose the workflow the task needs. Use a focused method for architecture, debugging, or TDD. Use /octo:embrace for Discover → Define → Develop → Deliver, with quality gates between phases.

🐙 31 specialized personas (role-specific AI agents like security-auditor, backend-architect), 54 commands (slash commands you type), 63 skills (reusable workflow modules). Explicit workflows select the experts they need; ordinary Claude requests do not activate Octopus.

🐙 Works with just Claude. Adds up to twelve external provider integrations. Zero external providers are needed to start. Add them one at a time — each becomes available when detected and runs only inside an explicit workflow.

💰 Five providers cost nothing extra when you already have access. Codex, Antigravity CLI, Copilot, and Cursor CLI use existing subscriptions or local auth. Ollama runs locally for free. Qwen now requires API-key or Coding-Plan auth; its free OAuth tier ended on 2026-04-15.

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What's New

Engineering methods

Octopus includes eight engineering methods adapted from Matt Pocock's skills. Routine architecture, TDD, and debugging use your current host. Ask for an independent opinion when a reviewer would help. Plans capture domain terms and blocking decisions, compare interface designs, and can propose a time-limited prototype.

Setup can resume an interrupted configuration and rechecks readiness before reporting success. See workflow methods for usage and the changelog for release details.

Premium /octo:auto routes also run one bounded cross-provider peer check after an eligible single-owner result, without requiring a second command or flag. Budget and Standard routes do not add the check, and existing multi-model workflows are not double-reviewed. Set OCTOPUS_PREMIUM_PEER_CHECK=off to disable it.

🆕 v11.6.0 — Smarter task planning, safer context routing, and more accurate diagnostics.

Default roster: Claude Opus 5 leads architecture, planning, security reasoning, and final judgment; GPT-5.6 Sol is the independent implementation/review peer; Claude Sonnet 5 is the standard Claude seat; Fable 5.1 remains an opt-in judgment escalation. Existing model pins and provider configuration still win. See the routing strategy.

/octo:model-config                         # inspect or override the frontier roster
OCTOPUS_OPUS5_AUTO_XHIGH=1                 # opt in to automatic xhigh Opus 5 phases
OCTOPUS_OPUS_MODEL=claude-fable-5-1        # explicitly opt in to Fable 5.1
OCTOPUS_CODEX_MODEL=gpt-6-astra            # explicitly opt in to Astra

🆕 v9.41 — Multi-LLM Council. /octo:council runs a structured 3/5/7-persona deliberation across Claude, Codex, Antigravity, and OpenCode with goal modes (advice, decision, plan, implement, review), styles (balanced, adversarial, red-team, executive, implementation), benchmark-aware role routing, quorum + critical-veto gates, budget caps, and gated worktree handoff for approved plans. Use it when one model's opinion isn't enough.

/octo:council --goal decision --style adversarial "Should this service stay monolithic?"
/octo:council --goal implement --implement plan-only "Refactor the auth flow"

Version	Best Features
v11.6.0 (new)	Smarter task planning, safer context routing, and more accurate diagnostics.
v9.50	Claude Code 2026 compatibility layer — routines manifest (schedule + GitHub-event automations), SubagentStop quality/cost gate, /octo:usage cost attribution, worktree.bgIsolation opt-out, Claude Agent SDK seat (introduced with Opus 4.8 and now following the current Opus 5 default), starter skills pack, /plugin browse manifest with projected context cost.
v9.41	/octo:council promoted to first-class workflow — structured multi-LLM deliberation with goal modes, adversarial/red-team styles, benchmark-aware persona routing, quorum and critical-veto gates, budget preflight, and gated worktree handoff for approved implementation plans.
v9	Up to 10 external provider integrations (Codex, Antigravity CLI, Copilot, Qwen, Ollama, Perplexity, OpenRouter, OrcaRouter, OpenCode, and Grok) alongside the Claude Code host. Structured provider debates and configurable multi-LLM councils. Explicit-only activation by default, with an optional smart router. Agent summary tables show which providers actually contributed. Provider-aware prompt preflight prevents silent oversize failures. Research breadth modes fan out light, standard, or exhaustive investigations. Setup aliases and fuzzy /octo:* corrections reduce command friction. Opt-in discipline gates and token compression. Two-stage review. Circuit breakers with automatic provider recovery inside active workflows. Cursor + OpenCode + Codex cross-compatibility. bin/octopus CLI. 182 Claude Code capability flags through v2.1.219, including Opus 5, Sonnet 5, and dynamic workflow awareness.
v8	Multi-LLM code review with inline PR comments. Parallel workstreams in isolated git worktrees. Reaction engine — auto-responds to CI failures. 32 specialized personas. Dark Factory autonomous pipeline.
v7	Double Diamond workflow. Multi-provider dispatch. Quality gates and consensus scoring. Configurable sandbox modes.

Full changelog →

V10 migration guide →

V10 adds a durable execution contract, fail-closed contribution validation, Doctor 2.0, Provider Registry 2.0, process-tree cancellation evidence, and opt-in eval routing. Existing provider and model pins still win. Automation that uses doctor --json must handle exit 1 while retaining its valid JSON body; invalid arguments return 2. See the migration guide for compatibility and rollback details.

• Current fresh configurations use GPT-5.6 Sol for Codex implementation/review, Claude Opus 5 for premium Claude work, and Claude Sonnet 5 for the standard Claude seat. Existing environment, session, and providers.json pins remain unchanged; OCTOPUS_LEGACY_ROLES=1 restores the pre-frontier role mapping.

• New claude-sdk seat env vars (v9.50): CLAUDE_SDK_API_KEY, OCTOPUS_CLAUDE_SDK_MODEL, OCTOPUS_CLAUDE_SDK_MAX_TOKENS, OCTOPUS_CLAUDE_SDK_ALLOWED_MODELS, OCTOPUS_CLAUDE_SDK_CONTEXT_BUDGET.
• Fable guards apply to claude-fable-5-1 and preserved claude-fable-5 pins. OCTOPUS_FABLE5_MAX_EFFORT raises the default high ceiling without disabling the other guards.
• Premium Claude role routing (architect, strategist, security-reviewer to Opus) landed in v9.29; restore the older mapping with OCTOPUS_LEGACY_ROLES=1.

Quickstart

# Terminal (not inside a Claude Code session):
claude plugin marketplace add https://github.com/nyldn/plugins.git
claude plugin install octo@nyldn-plugins

# Then inside Claude Code:
/octo:setup

That's it. Setup detects installed providers, shows what's missing, and walks you through configuration. You need zero external providers to start — Claude is built in.

Dormant by default

Installing Octopus does not route ordinary prompts, launch provider workflows, or delegate to Octopus agents. Every shipped command and skill uses Claude Code's native manual-invocation gate. Start it with /octo:*.

Seeing cannot be used with Skill tool due to disable-model-invocation? That is the gate working as intended — the model tried to auto-invoke an Octopus skill. Invoke it explicitly instead: type /octo:skill-doctor (the manually invokable skill), not a model call to the skill-doctor skill. Slash skills are user-invoked, so they bypass this invocation gate; the model will not call Octopus skills on its own unless you opt into the router below. Rule of thumb: invoke Octopus with /octo:…, don't expect Claude to reach for it for you.

Optional automation remains available, but it is explicit opt-in:

export OCTOPUS_AUTO_ROUTER_MODE=suggest  # suggest a route for plain prompts
# or: OCTOPUS_AUTO_ROUTER_MODE=invoke    # load the matched command route
export OCTO_DONE_CRITERIA=on             # compound-task completion coaching
export OCTOPUS_COMPRESS_ENABLED=true     # PostToolUse output compression
export OCTO_STRATEGY_ROTATION=on         # failure strategy rotation
export OCTOPUS_CONTEXT_AWARENESS=on      # statusline-to-context reinforcement
export OCTOPUS_SESSION_MEMORY=on         # SessionStart preference restoration

This legacy opt-in examines ordinary prompts. invoke can start paid external-provider workflows and share the routed prompt context with configured providers; prefer suggest unless that behavior is intentional. Provider-side retention follows each provider account's policy. Unset the variable (or set it