summon

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When To Use
• When NOT To Use
• Orchestration Loop
• Pipeline-to-Skill Mapping
• Context Overflow Protocol
• Token Budget Protocol
• Failure Handling
• Module Reference

Summon

Overview

Summon is the egregore orchestration loop. It reads the manifest (.egregore/manifest.json), selects the next active work item, maps the current pipeline step to a specialist skill, and invokes that skill. After each step it advances the pipeline, checks context and token budgets, and repeats until all items are completed or the budget is exhausted.

The orchestrator never re-implements phase logic. Each pipeline step delegates to an existing skill via Skill() calls. Summon only manages state transitions, retries, and budget guards.

When To Use

• Processing one or more work items through the full intake-build-quality-ship pipeline.
• Resuming an interrupted egregore session (manifest already exists with active items).
• Running autonomously under a watchdog that relaunches on exit.

When NOT To Use

• Running a single skill in isolation (call the skill directly instead).
• Exploratory work where the pipeline does not apply.
• When human review is needed before every step (use manual skill invocations).

Launching the Orchestrator

Always launch the orchestrator agent in the FOREGROUND. Do not use run_in_background: true. The main session becomes the egregore: it blocks on the orchestrator agent until the egregore finishes or is dismissed.

Agent(
  subagent_type: "egregore:orchestrator",
  prompt: "<context about work items and current state>",
  run_in_background: false   // Required
)

If you launch the orchestrator in the background, the main session will have nothing to do and will stop. This defeats the entire purpose of the egregore. The stop hook cannot prevent this because background agents are detached.