/owner-agent-consult

name: owner-agent-consult
description: Before answering your OWNER, when the answer genuinely depends on something another agent of the same owner holds and you do not, ask that one agent once, with a plain message in the owner's owner-only consult room, and tell the owner you asked. Its reply in the thread is matched to your ask by Matrix relations and relayed to the owner, or, past the nudge time, you tell the owner there is no answer. One question, one answer per owner task; no onward consults and no automatic recovery. Inert until a consult room and room transport are configured.

Owner-agent consult

One owner often runs several agents (one per machine, one per project). When your owner asks you something whose answer lives with a sibling agent, ask the sibling instead of guessing.

Messages are ordinary chat. The ask is the question, starting with the asked agent's exact mxid; the answer is that agent's reply in the thread. The consult id, the thread root and the ask's event live only in the asking agent's state files, so any agent can answer, including one that does not run this skill.

Out of scope

• **No onward consults.** An asked agent answers from what it holds. It does not ask a third

agent, and there are no chains, follow-ups or second asks.

• **No recovery.** When the outcome of a post is unclear (a timeout, no event id, output that is

not JSON), the ask or answer stays **unconfirmed**. It is never looked for in the room and never posted again. Tell the owner you could not confirm the ask; the owner asks again with a new message, which is a new task. A crash mid-consult likewise leaves it pending.

• **An answer is delivered at most once.** `match --final` returns the answer once and never

again. A crash between the close and the relay is reported, not retried: `pending` lists the consult as `closed_unrelayed`, and you tell the owner that the answer may not have been delivered (at least once: a second crash may repeat the notice). The owner's next message is a new task.

• **AG2 Space origins only.** `ask` accepts only an owner task with `source: ag2space`, whose

conversation the relay can reach with `[channel:]` and `[thread:]`. A task from another source is refused; answer it without consulting.

• **Exact mxid only.** An ask is recognised only when its plain body starts with the asked

agent's exact mxid, followed by the end of the body or one separator (` — `, `: `, a space or a newline). A longer mxid that starts with it is another agent. A client pill that shows only a display name is not recognised.

When to use it: all of these, or do not

1. **It starts from your owner's task.** `ask --task-id <owner task>` takes the task's id, never a path or text. The task must be live in this workspace's inbox, carry a verified envelope, `access_tier: owner` on every tier line, no collaborator flag and no result. A task from the consult room itself counts only when the owner wrote it. 2. **The answer genuinely depends on another agent.** "It owns that host and I do not" is a reason; "it might know more" is not. 3. **Whom to ask comes from `collaboration-intelligence`**, never from recall. This skill only checks that the agent is one of your owner's agents in the consult room.

Not for coordination, hand-offs, review requests, anything another person should see, or fanning one question out to several agents.

Configure (manifest `config`, `CLI > env > manifest`)

| key | default | meaning | | --- | --- | --- | | `OWNER_AGENT_CONSULT_ROOM` | empty | the consult room id. Unset: inert, and says so. | | `OWNER_AGENT_CONSULT_ROOM_CLI` | empty | absolute path of the room transport CLI (below). Unset: inert. | | `OWNER_AGENT_CONSULT_NUDGE_AFTER_S` | `600` | when an unanswered consult is due a note to the owner (60–86400). | | `OWNER_AGENT_CONSULT_MAX_DURATION_S` | `1800` | the answer window: a reply counts only if posted within this long after the ask, by server time (60–86400). | | `OWNER_AGENT_CONSULT_EXPIRE_AFTER_S` | `604800` | after this, a new match is refused, and a nudged consult whose task is done is hidden from `pending` (3600–7776000). No record is deleted. | | `OWNER_AGENT_CONSULT_ENABLED` | `1` | `0`/`false`/`off` makes it inert. |

On a desktop install prefer env overrides: the engine tree, manifest included, is replaced on update. In AG2 Space, give the owner's agents **Owner** access in the consult room (or Team with Agent Native **Collaborator access**); with plain Team access the asks and answers reach each agent on the read-only path, which cannot run `consult.py`.

Ask

python3 skills/owner-agent-consult/scripts/consult.py roster --agent "<your-mxid>"
python3 skills/owner-agent-consult/scripts/consult.py ask --agent "<your-mxid>" \
  --agent-to "<mxid from roster>" --question-file <file> --task-id <owner task id>

The question file is the question in plain words. `ask` posts it as a new top-level message that roots the consult thread, records the consult under `<workspace>/state/owner-agent-consult/pending/<cid>.json`, and returns at once. It never reads the room. When the owner sets a bound ("give it five minutes"), pass `--max-duration`; the smaller of it and the config applies.

• `{"ok": false, "inert": true}`: not configured. Answer without consulting.
• `{"asked": true, "cid", "ask_event", "root"}`: finish the owner's task now. Tell the owner you

asked that agent and will come back with its answer.

• `{"asked": true, "unconfirmed": true, "warning"}`: tell the owner you could not confirm the

ask; they can ask again with a new message.

• `{"asked": false, "reason"}`: refused. Tell the owner in one line why, then answer from what

you hold. A second ask from the same task is always refused: one ask per task.

Answer (when an ask arrives at you)

It arrives as a task from the consult room. Any agent may just reply in the thread. An agent running this skill should use `answer`, which po