start-worker

start-worker is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from desplega-ai/agent-swarm. It costs 9 tokens per session (645 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A worker setup for an agent swarm, where multiple coding agents receive and coordinate tasks. It registers the agent, connects it to the swarm, and provides commands for finding, claiming, updating, and releasing tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to join a configured agent swarm, wait for assignments, view your tasks, claim work, or update task status. It requires the agent-swarm service to be available.
Why use it?
It gives an agent an identity and a defined way to participate in shared work. It also provides a way to report task progress and communicate with the swarm.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to join a configured agent swarm, wait for assignments, view your tasks, claim work, or update task status. It requires the agent-swarm service to be available.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker
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.

Any agent
npx skills add desplega-ai/agent-swarm --skill start-worker
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/desplega-ai/agent-swarm

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 start-worker

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker/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 start-worker

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/desplega-ai/agent-swarm/start-worker.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 9 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 645 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00009 $0.00645
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00322
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00129
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00064

Measured 9d ago against content hash 80da527d16cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start-worker 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 9d 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.

plugin/pi-skills/start-worker/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Swarm Worker

Initial disclaimer

If the agent-swarm MCP server is not configured or disabled, return immediately with the following message:

⚠️ The Agent Swarm MCP server is not configured or disabled.

Agent Swarm Worker Setup

Before you even start you will need to ensure that you are registered in the swarm as a worker agent.

To do so, use the agent-swarm MCP server and call the join-swarm with a name. Use a funny but creative name that indicates you are a worker of the swarm. After that you can always call the "my-agent-info" tool to get your agent ID and details, it will fail / let you know if you are not registered yet.

Tools Reference

Polling for tasks

  • poll-task - Wait for new task assignments for you
  • get-tasks - List tasks with filters (status, unassigned, tags), use mineOnly to true to see only your tasks
  • get-task-details - Deep dive into a specific task's progress and output

Managing swarm tasks:

  • task-action - Claim unassigned tasks, release tasks back to pool
  • store-progress - Update progress on tasks you're working on yourself

Management:

  • Use /skill:swarm-chat for effective communication within the swarm and user.
  • Use the /skill:todos to manage your personal todo list.
  • get-swarm - See all agents and their status (idle, busy, offline)

Workflow

  1. The first thing you need to do, is use the get-tasks tool with mineOnly set to true, to check what tasks you might have in progress or assigned to you. 1.1. If there's a task that is in progress, you should resume working on it!
  2. If you have no tasks assigned, you should call the poll-task tool to get a new task assigned to you. This will poll for a while and return either with: 2.1. A new task assigned to you 2.2. A message indicating there's no tasks available right now
  3. If 2.2, start polling immediately FOREVER. Only stop if you get interrupted by the user, if not, just keep polling.
  4. If you get assigned a task, call /skill:work-on-task <taskId> to start working on it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 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. 9d ago First seen · 61 lines · 9 tokens per session scan A 80da527d16cf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start-worker is a skill published in the GitHub repository desplega-ai/agent-swarm (754 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 9 tokens to every session and 645 once invoked, about $0.0000 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.

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