Agent skill

Orchestrating Skills

by oaustegard in oaustegard/claude-skills

Skill-aware orchestration with context routing. An agent skill from oaustegard/claude-skills.

MITAuto-check passedAgent Workflows

Install Orchestrating Skills

skills CLI
$ npx skills add oaustegard/claude-skills --skill orchestrating-skills -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install oaustegard/claude-skills orchestrating-skills --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/oaustegard/claude-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/orchestrating-skills .claude/skills/orchestrating-skills && 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
orchestrating-skills
GitHub stars
150
Token cost
~1.9k tokens
SKILL.md length
664 words
Files
8 (incl. scripts, references)
Skills in repo
67
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Skill-aware orchestration with context routing. An agent skill from oaustegard/claude-skills.

  • Works in 4 steps: Planning (LLM) → Assembly (Deterministic Code) → Execution (Parallel LLM) → …
  • Tasks require multiple analytical perspectives
  • SKILL.md covers SURFACE ROUTING — read first, When to Use, When NOT to Use and Quick Start, plus 7 more sections
  • Runs Python scripts from its folder; calls python and pip; needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

What it does

Orchestrating Skills is an agent skill from oaustegard/claude-skills. Skill-aware orchestration with context routing. Decomposes complex tasks into skill-typed subtasks, extracts targeted context subsets, executes subagents in parallel, and synthesizes results. Self-answers trivial lookups inline. No SDK dependency — uses raw HTTP via httpx. Use when tasks require multiple analytical perspectives, when context is large and subtasks only need portions, or when orchestrating-agents spawns too many redundant subagents.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.9k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 9 other files, including scripts and reference files (for example `CHANGELOG.md`, `references/architecture.md` and `scripts/__init__.py`).

It sits in Agent Workflows, covering Task breakdown and Subagents. It works with Anthropic API. The repository describes itself as: My collection of Claude skills. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks require multiple analytical perspectives
  • Context is large and subtasks only need portions
  • Orchestrating-agents spawns too many redundant subagents

Example prompts

  • “/orchestrating-skills”

Requirements

  • Python 3
  • A credential in ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Planning (LLM)
  2. Assembly (Deterministic Code)
  3. Execution (Parallel LLM)
  4. Synthesis (LLM)

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 90b0f1b. 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

    Ships 5 files in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • python
    • pip

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

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md. Its commands use pip, which can reach the network depending on how they are called.

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

  • Credentials

    Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

    • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

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

Context cost

Orchestrating Skills loads about 1.9k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.9k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 118 tokens; SKILL.md has 664 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~118
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.9k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~3.9k

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); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from oaustegard/claude-skills at commit 90b0f1b, republished under its MIT licence (© oaustegard). 664 words, ~1,926 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/orchestrating-skills/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 7 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
orchestrating-skills
description
Skill-aware orchestration with context routing. Decomposes complex tasks into skill-typed subtasks, extracts targeted context subsets, executes subagents in parallel, and synthesizes results. Self-answers trivial lookups inline. No SDK dependency — uses raw HTTP via httpx. Use when tasks require multiple analytical perspectives, when context is large and subtasks only need portions, or when orchestrating-agents spawns too many redundant subagents.
metadata.version
0.4.0

SURFACE ROUTING — read first

This skill hand-rolls subagent orchestration via raw Anthropic API calls. A managed runtime now does the same job. Which one to use depends on your surface:

  • In Claude Code (incl. CCotw): use the native runtime, NOT this skill. If you can invoke /deep-research, trigger a run with the workflow keyword, set /effort ultracode, or spawn Task subagents — do that instead. The runtime gives 16-concurrent / 1000-agent ceilings, an approval gate, adversarial cross-review, and in-session resume that this skill would otherwise reimplement badly. Dynamic workflows shipped in research preview (Claude Code v2.1.154+, 2026).
  • In claude.ai chat or the bare API (no workflow runtime): use this skill. Parallel API instances over httpx is the only fan-out path here. Proceed below.

Discriminator: do you have a native subagent/Task tool or a workflow command? Yes → native. No → this skill. Never reimplement the runtime where it already exists.

Skill-Aware Orchestration

Orchestrate complex multi-step tasks through a four-phase pipeline that eliminates redundant context processing and reflexive subagent spawning.

When to Use

  • Task requires multiple analytical perspectives (e.g., compare + critique + synthesize)
  • Context is large and subtasks only need portions of it
  • Simple lookups should be self-answered without spawning subagents

When NOT to Use

  • Single-skill tasks (just use the skill directly)
  • Tasks requiring tool use or code execution (this is text-analysis orchestration)
  • Real-time streaming requirements (this is batch-oriented)

Quick Start

python
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, "/mnt/skills/user/orchestrating-skills/scripts")
from orchestrate import orchestrate

result = orchestrate(
    context=open("report.md").read(),
    task="Compare the two proposed architectures, extract cost figures, and recommend one",
    verbose=True,
)
print(result["result"])

Dependencies

  • httpx (usually pre-installed; pip install httpx if not)
  • No Anthropic SDK required
  • API key: reads ANTHROPIC_API_KEY env var or /mnt/project/claude.env

Four-Phase Pipeline

Phase 1: Planning (LLM)

The orchestrator reads the full context once and produces a JSON plan:

json
{
  "subtasks": [
    {
      "task": "Compare architecture A vs B on scalability, cost, and complexity",
      "skill": "analytical_comparison",
      "context_pointers": {"sections": ["Architecture A", "Architecture B"]}
    },
    {
      "task": "What is the project budget?",
      "skill": "self",
      "answer": "$2.4M"
    }
  ]
}

Key behaviors:

  • Assigns one skill per subtask from the built-in library
  • Uses "self" for direct lookups (numbers, names, dates) — no subagent spawned
  • Self-answering is an LLM judgment call, not a sentence-count heuristic
  • Context pointers use section headers (structural, edit-resilient)
Phase 2: Assembly (Deterministic Code)

No LLM calls. Extracts context subsets using section headers or line ranges, pairs each with the assigned skill's system prompt, builds prompt dicts.

Phase 3: Execution (Parallel LLM)

Delegated subtasks run in parallel via concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor. Each subagent receives only its context slice and skill-specific instructions.

Phase 4: Synthesis (LLM)

Collects all results (self-answered + subagent), synthesizes into a coherent response that reads as if a single expert wrote it.

Show full SKILL.md (288 more words)Show less

Built-in Skill Library

Eight analytical skills plus one pipeline skill:

SkillPurpose
analytical_comparisonCompare items along dimensions with trade-offs
fact_extractionExtract facts with source attribution
structured_synthesisCombine multiple sources into narrative
causal_reasoningIdentify cause-effect chains
critiqueEvaluate arguments for soundness
classificationCategorize items with rationale
summarizationProduce concise summaries
gap_analysisIdentify missing information
rememberPersist key findings to long-term memory via remembering skill (pipeline-only, runs post-synthesis)

API Reference

orchestrate(context, task, **kwargs) -> dict

Returns:

python
{
    "result": "Final synthesized response",
    "plan": {...},
    "subtask_count": 4,
    "self_answered": 1,
    "delegated": 3,
    "memory_ids": ["abc123"],  # populated when remember subtasks ran
}

Parameters:

  • context (str): Full context to process
  • task (str): What to accomplish
  • model (str): Claude model, default claude-sonnet-5-5 ($2/$10 per MTok). Sampling parameters (temperature) are only sent to legacy 4.x/3.x ids; Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5 and Opus 5.5 reject them, so on those models the internal temperatures (0.2-0.3) are ignored
  • max_tokens (int): Per-subagent token limit, default 2048
  • synthesis_max_tokens (int): Synthesis token limit, default 4096
  • max_workers (int): Parallel subagent limit, default 5
  • skills (dict): Custom skill library (merged with built-in)
  • persist (bool): Auto-append a remember subtask to store findings, default False
  • verbose (bool): Print progress to stderr
CLI
bash
python orchestrate.py \
    --context-file report.md \
    --task "Analyze this report" \
    --verbose --json

Extending the Skill Library

python
from skill_library import SKILLS

custom_skills = {
    **SKILLS,
    "code_review": {
        "description": "Review code for bugs, style, and security",
        "system_prompt": "You are a code review specialist...",
        "output_hint": "issues_list with severity and fix suggestions",
    }
}

result = orchestrate(context=code, task="Review this PR", skills=custom_skills)

Persisting Findings with remember

remember is a pipeline skill — it executes in Phase 4 after synthesis, not as a parallel subagent. It uses LLM distillation to extract the key insight from the synthesized result, then writes it to long-term memory via the remembering skill.

Two ways to activate persistence

1. persist=True (automatic)

python
result = orchestrate(
    context=open("report.md").read(),
    task="Compare approaches A and B",
    persist=True,  # auto-injects a remember subtask
    verbose=True,
)
print(result["memory_ids"])  # ['abc123']

2. Planner-emitted (explicit)

The orchestrator planner can emit remember as a subtask when the task description implies storage:

json
{
  "task": "Store the key findings from this analysis",
  "skill": "remember",
  "context_pointers": {}
}
Requirements
  • remembering skill must be installed (/mnt/skills/user/remembering or /home/user/claude-skills/remembering)
  • Turso credentials must be available (auto-detected by the remembering skill)
  • If unavailable, persistence is skipped silently and memory_ids returns []

Architecture Details

See references/architecture.md for design decisions, token efficiency analysis, and comparison with SkillOrchestra (arXiv 2602.19672).

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

Files

SKILL.md and 7 other files (scripts, references) in orchestrating-skills of oaustegard/claude-skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • CHANGELOG.md
  • references/architecture.md
  • scripts/__init__.py
  • scripts/assembler.py
  • scripts/client.py
  • scripts/orchestrate.py
  • scripts/skill_library.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 90b0f1b

Compare with similar skills

Orchestrating Skills 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.

Orchestrating Skills compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Orchestrating Skills this skilloaustegard/claude-skills150—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
OMA Multi-Agent Orchestratorfirst-fluke/oh-my-agent1.3k—~3.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Cursor Orchestratecursor/plugins11k—~1.1kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Swarm Parallel Dispatchlangchain-ai/langchain-skills1.3k—~3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Launching Agent Teamslexler/skill-factory239—~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Agents Project Coordinatorasgeirtj/system_prompts_leaks69k—~2.9kAutomated safety check: PassCC0-1.0

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Works with

Categories

Questions about Orchestrating Skills

What does Orchestrating Skills do?

Skill-aware orchestration with context routing. An agent skill from oaustegard/claude-skills. Orchestrating Skills is an agent skill from oaustegard/claude-skills. Skill-aware orchestration with context routing.

When should I use Orchestrating Skills?

Orchestrating Skills fits situations like: tasks require multiple analytical perspectives; context is large and subtasks only need portions; orchestrating-agents spawns too many redundant subagents.

How do I install Orchestrating Skills in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Orchestrating Skills in Codex?

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

Can I use Orchestrating Skills 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 oaustegard/claude-skills --skill orchestrating-skills -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/orchestrating-skills, .gemini/skills/orchestrating-skills, .github/skills/orchestrating-skills and .opencode/skills/orchestrating-skills in your project.

What does Orchestrating Skills need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Orchestrating Skills needs Python for the scripts in its folder, the command-line tools its instructions call (python and pip) and credentials named ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Our summary lists: Python 3; A credential in ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

Does Orchestrating Skills access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Its commands use pip, which can reach the network depending on how they are called. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Orchestrating Skills 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. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Orchestrating Skills use?

Orchestrating Skills is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Orchestrating Skills use?

About 1.9k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7.7k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 2k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Orchestrating Skills?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Orchestrating Skills: OMA Multi-Agent Orchestrator (first-fluke/oh-my-agent, 1.3k stars), Cursor Orchestrate (cursor/plugins, 11k stars), Swarm Parallel Dispatch (langchain-ai/langchain-skills, 1.3k stars) and Launching Agent Teams (lexler/skill-factory, 239 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Orchestrating Skills?

oaustegard (a GitHub user) maintains it in oaustegard/claude-skills, which has 150 GitHub stars. The repository holds 67 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 9, 2026.

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