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 it fails with runtime_access_denied, your sandbox blocked the connection:
re-run it with escalated permissions, and do not run ORCA open or restart Orca. If
skills get is unknown, explain that updating Orca restores the guide; use --help for
read-only discovery and do not guess unsupported commands.