/orchestration

name: orchestration
description: >-
  Coordinate supervised Orca workers: threaded messages, blocking ask/reply,
  task dispatch, worker_done/escalation waits, task DAGs, decision gates,
  coordinator loops, and decomposing work across agents. Use `orca-cli` for full
  ownership handoffs — "hand off", "handoff", "handover", "give this to another
  agent", "another worktree" — unless asked to supervise, monitor, or coordinate
  a DAG, and for terminal control, lightweight terminal prompts, shell commands,
  Orca worktree management, and reading or waiting on terminals. Use Computer
  Use for external browser windows, webviews, Orca app UI, or desktop UI outside
  Orca's embedded browser only when the task requires OS/window-level control
  such as focus, menus, dialogs, coordinates, or screenshots. Use `orca-cli` for
  Orca's embedded pages and a page-automation tool such as Playwright or CDP for
  external pages.

Orca Orchestration

This file is a discovery stub, not the usage guide. The full, version-matched Orca orchestration reference is served by the `orca` binary itself — kept out of this file on purpose so it can never drift from the binary that will actually run your commands.

Engage Orca orchestration whenever you need structured multi-agent coordination: threaded messages, blocking ask/reply flows, task dispatch, worker_done/escalation waits, task DAGs, decision gates, coordinator loops, or decomposing work across agents. Use the orca-cli skill instead for full ownership handoffs ("hand off", "handoff", "handover", "give this to another agent", "another worktree") when the user did not ask to supervise, monitor, wait for results, or coordinate a DAG — and for ordinary terminal control, shell commands, worktree management, and the built-in browser. Coordination requires real Orca runtime state; never substitute a non-Orca subagent tool.

Resolve the CLI for this session

Choose the executable once and reuse it for every later command:

• If the `ORCA_CLI_COMMAND` environment variable is set, use its value. Orca exports this

for managed WSL sessions.

• Otherwise, in a dev checkout whose session exposes `ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT`, use `orca-dev`.
• Otherwise, on Linux outside an Orca-managed terminal, use `orca-ide`. Never run bare

`orca` there — outside Orca's terminals it normally resolves to the GNOME Orca screen reader (`/usr/bin/orca`) and starts speech on the user's machine.

• Otherwise, use `orca`.

Below, `ORCA` is a placeholder for the executable you resolved. Substitute it before running anything; do not create a shell variable or run `ORCA` literally. This works the same way in POSIX shells, PowerShell, and cmd.exe.

If the selected executable cannot run, report its exact error and stop. Do not fall through to another executable, which could silently target a different Orca build.

Load the version-matched guide before running Orca commands

ORCA skills get orchestration

That prints the compact, version-matched guide for the exact binary that will handle your next commands. It covers the normal local coordinator loop. For a conditional action gate such as remote placement, uncertain release recovery, or expanded DAG work, load only the reference that gate names with `ORCA skills get orchestration --reference references/<file>.md` (`--references` lists the names). If that binary rejects `--reference`, run `ORCA skills get orchestration --full` and read the named bundled reference before acting.

Prefer `--json`. Use the selected executable's `--help` for commands or flags the guide does not cover. If a command reports that Orca is not running, start it with `ORCA open --json` and retry. If `skills get` is unknown, explain that updating Orca restores the guide; use `--help` for read-only discovery and do not guess unsupported commands.