What it does. 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.
Highlights
- If the
ORCA_CLI_COMMAND
environment variable is set, use its value. Orca exports this
- 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
- Otherwise, use
orca
.
When to use it. Structured multi-agent coordination for Orca: threaded messages, blocking ask/reply, task dispatch and shared state between agents.
Install
npx skills add stablyai/orca --skill orchestration
Or copy the skill folder manually:
git clone https://github.com/stablyai/orca.git
cp -r orca/skills/orchestration/ ~/.claude/skills/orchestration
Source: stablyai/orca — 59,988 stars, MIT, last pushed 2026-09-02.
