CLI Agent Orchestrator is a tool that coordinates multiple AI coding command-line programs by running them as separate workers in isolated terminal sessions. A supervisor uses it to delegate software tasks to specialist agents in parallel or in sequence while the workers retain their normal command-line capabilities. The catalogue skills operate this orchestration workflow.
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.
npx skills add awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator --skill cao-agent-plugin-creatorgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestratorWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-agent-plugin-creator)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-agent-plugin-creator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-agent-plugin-creator/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-agent-plugin-creator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-agent-plugin-creator.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00192 | $0.04114 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00077 | $0.01646 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00038 | $0.00823 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00019 | $0.00411 |
Grade A, and why
cao-agent-plugin-creator 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 2d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 344 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Create an Agent Plugin
Take a contributor from an empty directory to an Agent Plugins 1.0.0 package that CAO's own validator reports as loadable. Every rule below is read from the schema bytes CAO vendors, or from CAO's validator code, and each one names its source so you can check it rather than trust it.
Two unrelated things share the word "plugin"
CAO has two systems that both use the word. Never write it unqualified.
| Term | What it is | Where it lives in CAO |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Plugin | A portable directory of Agent Skills, optionally with MCP servers, described by a plugin.json manifest |
src/cli_agent_orchestrator/agent_plugins/, docs/agent-plugins.md |
| event plugin | A Python package running inside cao-server, reacting to lifecycle events |
src/cli_agent_orchestrator/plugins/, docs/plugins.md |
| Agent Skill | A directory holding a SKILL.md; the unit an Agent Plugin ships |
skills/, docs/skills.md |
This skill is about the first row only. For an event plugin, load cao-plugin.
To convert an agent plugin that already exists for one client, load
migrate-agent-plugin; this skill starts from nothing.
The smallest valid package
An Agent Plugin root needs exactly one file:
my-package/
└── plugin.json
{
"$schema": "https://agent-plugins.org/schemas/1.0.0/plugin.schema.json",
"name": "my-package"
}
That manifest is complete. Everything else is optional. A package that ships
skills adds a skills/ directory:
my-package/
├── plugin.json
├── mcp.json # optional
└── skills/ # optional
├── first-skill/
│ └── SKILL.md
└── second-skill/
├── SKILL.md
└── references/ # anything inside a skill directory is the skill's own business
└── notes.md
The manifest contract
The authority is the vendored schema,
src/cli_agent_orchestrator/schemas/agent_plugins/1.0.0/plugin.schema.json.
Line numbers below are into that file.
What ships with it
1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 344 lines · 192 tokens per session scan A 58e4cc3b9775
cao-agent-plugin-creator is a skill published in the GitHub repository awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator (1,515 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 192 tokens to every session and 4,114 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-11-05.
cao-agent-plugin-creator compared with skills from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cao-agent-plugin-creatorawslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator | Skill | 1.5k | yesterday | Apache-2.0 | A | 192 | Claude Code |
| tool-selectionlakpriya1s/agent-rack | Skill | 2 | 3mo ago | MIT | A | 53 | Claude Code |
| reviewlakpriya1s/agent-rack | Skill | 2 | 3mo ago | MIT | A | 18 | Claude Code |
| session-sendlakpriya1s/agent-rack | Skill | 2 | 3mo ago | MIT | A | 15 | Claude Code |
| review-handlinglakpriya1s/agent-rack | Skill | 2 | 3mo ago | MIT | A | 38 | Claude Code |
| runlakpriya1s/agent-rack | Skill | 2 | 3mo ago | MIT | A | 19 | Claude Code |
| session-logslakpriya1s/agent-rack | Skill | 2 | 3mo ago | MIT | A | 19 | Claude Code |