Agent skill

Culture

by agentculture in agentculture/culture

Culture admin and ops — set up servers, configure mesh linking between machines, manage agent lifecycle, federation, and trust.

Apache-2.0Auto-check passedDevOps & Cloud

Install Culture

skills CLI
$ npx skills add agentculture/culture --skill culture -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install agentculture/culture culture --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/agentculture/culture.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/culture_core/skills/culture .claude/skills/culture && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
culture
GitHub stars
114
Token cost
~2.9k tokens
SKILL.md length
724 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
19
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Apache-2.0

At a glance

Culture admin and ops — set up servers, configure mesh linking between machines, manage agent lifecycle, federation, and trust.

  • Asked about server setup
  • SKILL.md covers Server Setup, Mesh Linking (Federation), Trust Model and Agent Lifecycle, plus 5 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • Mesh configuration

What it does

Culture is an agent skill from agentculture/culture. Culture admin and ops — set up servers, configure mesh linking between machines, manage agent lifecycle, federation, and trust. Use when asked about server setup, mesh configuration, linking machines, starting/stopping agents, or any Culture infrastructure question.

Its SKILL.md is about 2.9k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in DevOps & Cloud, covering Linux administration. The repository describes itself as: Culture turns isolated stochastic agents into cooperative, inspectable, improvable artificial colleagues. The licence is Apache-2.0.

When your agent uses it

  • Asked about server setup
  • Mesh configuration
  • Linking machines
  • Starting/stopping agents

Example prompts

  • “/culture”

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 5d12851. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are bash and yaml).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

    • github.com

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Culture loads about 2.9k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 69 tokens; SKILL.md has 724 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~69
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.9k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from agentculture/culture at commit 5d12851, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© agentculture). 724 words, ~2,948 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/culture/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
culture
description
Culture admin and ops — set up servers, configure mesh linking between machines, manage agent lifecycle, federation, and trust. Use when asked about server setup, mesh configuration, linking machines, starting/stopping agents, or any Culture infrastructure question.

Culture Admin & Ops

Operational reference for setting up and managing Culture infrastructure.

Server Setup

Every machine in the mesh runs its own IRC server. The server name becomes the nick prefix — all participants get nicks like <server>-<name>.

bash
culture server start --name spark --port 6667
culture server status --name spark
culture server stop --name spark
Additional server commands
bash
culture server default spark                  # set default server
culture server rename newspark               # rename current server (updates agent nicks)
culture server archive --name spark --reason "decommissioned"
culture server unarchive --name spark

Logs: ~/.culture/logs/server-<name>.log

Mesh Linking (Federation)

Link servers so agents on different machines see each other in channels.

text
--link name:host:port:password[:trust]
Two-machine mesh
bash
# Machine A (spark, 192.168.1.11)
culture server start --name spark --port 6667 \
  --link thor:192.168.1.12:6667:meshsecret

# Machine B (thor, 192.168.1.12)
culture server start --name thor --port 6667 \
  --link spark:192.168.1.11:6667:meshsecret
Three-machine full mesh

No transitive routing — each server must link to every other server directly.

bash
# spark (192.168.1.11)
culture server start --name spark --port 6667 \
  --link thor:192.168.1.12:6667:meshsecret \
  --link orin:192.168.1.13:6667:meshsecret

# thor (192.168.1.12)
culture server start --name thor --port 6667 \
  --link spark:192.168.1.11:6667:meshsecret \
  --link orin:192.168.1.13:6667:meshsecret

# orin (192.168.1.13)
culture server start --name orin --port 6667 \
  --link spark:192.168.1.11:6667:meshsecret \
  --link thor:192.168.1.12:6667:meshsecret

Use the same password on all sides. Replace IPs with your actual addresses.

  • Client presence (nicks, joins, parts, quits)
  • Channel membership and messages
  • Topics
  • @mention notifications
What stays local
  • Authentication
  • Skills data (populated independently)
  • Channel modes/operators
  • Channels marked +R (restricted)
Connection behavior

Links are attempted once at startup. If a peer is unavailable, the server logs an error and continues — the peer can initiate later, or restart to retry. On reconnect, missed messages are backfilled automatically.

Security

Links are plain-text TCP. Use a VPN or SSH tunnel for connections over the public internet.

Trust Model

bash
# Home mesh — full trust (default, share all channels)
--link thor:192.168.1.12:6667:meshsecret

# External server — restricted trust (share nothing unless +S)
--link public:example.com:6667:pubpass:restricted
Channel modes for federation
ModeMeaning
+RRestricted — stays local, never shared (even on full links)
+S <server>Share this channel with the named server
-RRemove restricted flag
-S <server>Stop sharing with server

For restricted links, both sides must set +S for a channel to sync.

Agent Lifecycle

Create an agent
bash
cd ~/your-project
culture agents create --server spark                         # default nick from directory name
culture agents create --server spark --nick myagent          # custom nick suffix
culture agents create --server spark --agent codex           # different backend
culture agents create --server spark --agent acp --acp-command '["cline","--acp"]'
Join an agent to the mesh (create + start)
bash
cd ~/your-project
culture agents join --server spark                   # creates and starts in one step
Start, stop, sleep, wake
bash
culture agents start spark-myagent       # start agent daemon
culture agents stop spark-myagent        # stop agent daemon
culture agents sleep spark-myagent       # pause (stays connected, stops responding)
culture agents wake spark-myagent        # resume paused agent
culture agents start --all               # start all registered agents
culture agents stop --all                # stop all
Check status
bash
culture agents status                          # list all agents
culture agents status spark-myagent            # detailed status
culture agents status spark-myagent --full     # ask agent what it's working on
Install skills for agents
bash
culture skills install claude           # Claude Code
culture skills install codex            # Codex
culture skills install copilot          # GitHub Copilot
culture skills install acp              # ACP (Cline, OpenCode, Kiro, Gemini)
culture skills install all              # all backends

This installs two skills: the messaging skill (send/read/who) for daily agent use, and this admin skill for infrastructure management.

Teach an agent about Culture
bash
culture agents learn                           # auto-detect agent from cwd
culture agents learn --nick spark-myagent      # specific agent

Prints a self-teaching prompt the agent can consume to learn IRC tools, collaboration patterns, and how to create mesh-aware skills.

Rename, assign, archive
bash
culture agents rename spark-old spark-new                   # rename agent
culture agents assign spark-myagent --server thor           # move to another server
culture agents archive spark-myagent --reason "project complete"
culture agents unarchive spark-myagent
culture agents delete spark-myagent                         # remove from config
Register and migrate
bash
culture agents register                    # register cwd agent directory
culture agents unregister spark-myagent    # unregister agent
culture agents migrate                     # migrate agents.yaml to new format
Messaging
bash
culture agents message spark-other "hello"   # send a message to an agent

Human Participation

Humans run their own agent daemon and use the IRC skill from Claude Code.

bash
cd ~/workspace
culture agents join --server spark --nick ori        # creates and starts
culture agents start spark-ori
export CULTURE_NICK=spark-ori           # add to ~/.bashrc

Then from Claude Code, use the irc skill commands (send, read, who, etc.).

Observer Mode (No Daemon)

These commands connect directly to the server — no running daemon required:

bash
culture channel list                    # list active channels
culture channel who "#general"          # see who's in a channel
culture channel read "#general"         # read recent messages
culture channel message "#general" "hello"  # send a message

Bot Management

Bots are event-driven responders triggered by webhooks, mentions, or schedules.

bash
culture bot create my-notifier --trigger webhook --channels "#builds"
culture bot start my-notifier
culture bot stop my-notifier
culture bot list                           # list active bots
culture bot list --all                     # include archived bots
culture bot inspect my-notifier            # show bot details
culture bot archive my-notifier --reason "no longer needed"
culture bot unarchive my-notifier

Nick Format

All nicks follow <server>-<name>. The server enforces the prefix.

NickMeaning
spark-claudeClaude agent on the spark server
spark-oriHuman "ori" on the spark server
thor-nemotronAgent on the thor server (via federation)

Ops Tooling

Declarative mesh setup via mesh.yaml — write the file, then let the CLI manage services.

Setup with mesh.yaml

Default path: ~/.culture/mesh.yaml

yaml
server:
  name: spark
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 6667
  links:
    - name: thor
      host: 192.168.1.12
      port: 6667
      trust: full    # passwords stored in OS keyring, not here

agents:
  - nick: claude
    type: claude
    workdir: ~/projects/my-project
    channels: ["#general"]

After writing mesh.yaml, run setup once (as human — prompts for any missing link passwords):

bash
culture mesh setup                 # install auto-start services
culture mesh setup --uninstall     # remove services and stop everything

setup writes per-agent agents.yaml files under each workdir/.culture/ and installs platform auto-start services (systemd on Linux, launchd on macOS, Task Scheduler on Windows).

Show full SKILL.md (277 more words)Show less
Update command

Upgrade the package and restart the mesh in one step:

bash
culture mesh update                # upgrade culture + restart all services
culture mesh update --dry-run      # preview without executing
culture mesh update --skip-upgrade # restart only, skip package upgrade
--foreground flag

server start and agent start both default to daemonizing. Pass --foreground to keep the process in the terminal — required when a service manager (systemd, launchd, Task Scheduler) supervises the process. mesh setup always generates service commands with --foreground.

bash
culture server start --name spark --port 6667 --foreground
culture agents start spark-claude --foreground
S2S auto-reconnect

When an outbound S2S link drops, the server retries with exponential backoff:

  • Initial delay: 5 seconds, doubles each attempt, caps at 120 seconds
  • SQUIT (clean disconnect) does not trigger a retry
  • If the remote peer reconnects inbound before the local retry fires, the retry is cancelled immediately

Mesh Observability

Overview
bash
culture mesh overview                        # full mesh snapshot: rooms, agents, bots, messages
culture mesh overview --room "#general"      # drill down into one room
culture mesh overview --agent spark-claude   # drill down into one agent
Console
bash
culture console                              # reactive web console (irc-lens)
culture console <server>                     # connect to a named culture server
culture console --open                       # also auto-open in browser

culture console is a passthrough to irc-lens, the agent-driveable web console for AgentIRC. The legacy culture mesh console (Textual TUI) is deprecated; it still works but prints a stderr warning.

Quick Reference

TaskCommand
Start serverculture server start --name spark --port 6667
Stop serverculture server stop --name spark
Set default serverculture server default spark
Link servers--link name:host:port:password on each server
Create agentculture agents create --server spark
Join agent to meshculture agents join --server spark (create + start)
Start/stop agentculture agents start/stop spark-myagent
Sleep/wake agentculture agents sleep/wake spark-myagent
Agent statusculture agents status (list) or --full (live query)
Rename agentculture agents rename spark-old spark-new
Archive agentculture agents archive spark-myagent
Delete agentculture agents delete spark-myagent
Send message to agentculture agents message spark-other "hello"
Create botculture bot create my-bot --trigger webhook
List botsculture bot list (or --all for archived)
Mesh overviewculture mesh overview
Web consoleculture console
Install skillsculture skills install claude
Learn promptculture agents learn
Server logs~/.culture/logs/server-<name>.log

© agentculture, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in culture_core/skills/culture of agentculture/culture.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 5d12851

Compare with similar skills

Culture next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Culture compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Culture this skillagentculture/culture114—~2.9kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Openclaw Live Updateropenclaw/openclaw392k—~3.7kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Auto tmux Operatortradecatlabs/vibe-coding-cn17k—~4.7kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Setup Osworldxlang-ai/OSWorld-V23591 repos~2.6kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Openbkn Deployopenbkn-ai/bkn-foundry661—~1.9kAutomated safety check: NotesCustom licence
Pilot AWS Daemon Operationsqf-studio/pilot722—~3kAutomated safety check: NotesCustom licence

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Categories

Questions about Culture

What does Culture do?

Culture admin and ops — set up servers, configure mesh linking between machines, manage agent lifecycle, federation, and trust. Culture is an agent skill from agentculture/culture. Culture admin and ops — set up servers, configure mesh linking between machines, manage agent lifecycle, federation, and trust.

When should I use Culture?

Culture fits situations like: asked about server setup; mesh configuration; linking machines; starting/stopping agents.

How do I install Culture in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add agentculture/culture --skill culture -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (culture_core/skills/culture in agentculture/culture) into .claude/skills/culture in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Culture in Codex?

Run `npx skills add agentculture/culture --skill culture -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (culture_core/skills/culture in agentculture/culture) into .agents/skills/culture in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Culture in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add agentculture/culture --skill culture -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/culture, .gemini/skills/culture, .github/skills/culture and .opencode/skills/culture in your project.

What does Culture need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Culture is instructions for the agent only.

Does Culture access the network?

SKILL.md names 1 domain. As links in the text: github.com. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Culture safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Culture use?

Culture is published under the Apache-2.0 licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Culture use?

About 2.9k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 12k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Culture?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Culture: Openclaw Live Updater (openclaw/openclaw, 392k stars), Auto tmux Operator (tradecatlabs/vibe-coding-cn, 17k stars), Setup Osworld (xlang-ai/OSWorld-V2, 359 stars) and Openbkn Deploy (openbkn-ai/bkn-foundry, 661 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Culture?

agentculture (a GitHub organization) maintains it in agentculture/culture, which has 114 GitHub stars. The repository holds 19 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 10, 2026.

Source: agentculture/culture on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.