baton-pass

baton-pass is a command for Claude Code from oborchers/fractional-cto. It costs 26 tokens per session (1,134 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command for handing finished work from one coding agent to another agent waiting in a separate process. It sends a named signal, optionally with extra information.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps pass completion status and a payload to the correct waiting agent when work is ready to continue.
Why use it?
It coordinates dependent tasks without requiring the next agent to repeatedly check whether the previous one has finished.

Command for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool; positional $N argument.

Part of the agent-baton plugin — 1 skill, 2 commands, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit It helps pass completion status and a payload to the correct waiting agent when work is ready to continue.

Compare 6 commands from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oborchers/fractional-cto

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-baton, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill, 2 commands, 1 hook.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for baton-pass

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for baton-pass

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/oborchers/fractional-cto/baton-pass.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 26 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,134 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00026 $0.01134
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00567
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00227
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00113

Measured 10d ago against content hash 55b85b719b58, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

baton-pass scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agent-baton/commands/baton-pass.md · 68 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 68 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Publish a baton signalling that your work is complete, so an agent waiting in a separate process can start its dependent task.

Invoke the agent-baton skill and follow its protocol. This command is a thin wrapper — the skill is the specification.

Step 1: Resolve the baton id

The id comes from $1, or from the instruction you were given at setup ("pass the baton X when done").

Never invent an id. The waiting agent is already listening for a specific string; an id you made up is one nobody is waiting for.

Then, depending on how you got here:

  • The user just typed this command — they are present. If $1 is missing, use AskUserQuestion to ask for the id. If they offer a reused id, remind them of the skill's rule: the id must be unique per chain run, not per task, or it may collide with a leftover baton from an abandoned run.

  • You are publishing at the end of an instructed run — the user is almost certainly gone. The id must already be known from your setup instruction. If it is not, do not ask, and do not wait for an answer. A question here blocks forever on someone who left hours ago and strands the downstream agent until its deadline expires. Instead: report loudly that the chain is broken, state which run finished and that no baton could be published, and stop. A visible failure the user finds on their return beats a silent hang.

This is why the skill says to lock the id in the moment you are told, and to echo it back while the user is still watching.

Step 2: Resolve the status

The status comes from $2, and is done or failed.

If not given, determine it from the work you just completed:

  • The work succeeded → done.
  • The work failed, was abandoned, or you are unsure whether it succeeded → failed.

Publish a failed baton rather than publishing nothing. An agent that dies silently is indistinguishable from one still working; the waiter learns nothing until its deadline expires. A failed baton tells it immediately.

Read the full file on GitHub · 68 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 68 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 55b85b719b58

Subscribe to this mod's changes

baton-pass is a command published in the GitHub repository oborchers/fractional-cto (29 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 1,134 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.