orchestrating-swarms

orchestrating-swarms is a skill for Claude Code from gvkhosla/compound-engineering-pi. It costs 67 tokens per session (12,416 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A coordination workflow for organizing multiple coding agents into teams and assigning them dependent tasks. It describes agents, teammates, shared task queues, and messages used to coordinate their work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for parallel code reviews, multi-step implementation pipelines, and tasks where one agent's work depends on another's. It is designed around Claude Code's team and task tools.
Why use it?
Large tasks can be divided into independent or dependent pieces, but coordinating several agents requires shared ownership and status tracking. This workflow defines how those pieces can be organized.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions subagents; names the NotebookEdit tool.

Not installable: its command points at a path on the author’s own machine, so it runs nowhere else. The line is /Users/me/project.

Part of the compound-engineering plugin — 41 skills, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it for parallel code reviews, multi-step implementation pipelines, and tasks where one agent's work depends on another's. It is designed around Claude Code's team and task tools.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add gvkhosla/compound-engineering-pi
Claude Code
/plugin install compound-engineering

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install compound-engineering, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 41 skills, 1 MCP server.

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 orchestrating-swarms

README.md
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Your own site
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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 orchestrating-swarms

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gvkhosla/compound-engineering-pi/orchestrating-swarms"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gvkhosla/compound-engineering-pi/orchestrating-swarms.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 12,416 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. 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 $0.00067 $0.12416
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.06208
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.02483
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.01242

Measured 10d ago against content hash 80a48a7187da, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

orchestrating-swarms scanned grade B with 1 finding 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.

Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping

.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/ hold keys, settings and other credentials a mod has no legitimate need for.

// cat ~/.claude/teams/code-review/inboxes/team-lead.json
Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

plugins/compound-engineering/skills/orchestrating-swarms/SKILL.md · 1,719 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,719 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Claude Code Swarm Orchestration

Master multi-agent orchestration using Claude Code's TeammateTool and Task system.


Primitives

Primitive What It Is File Location
Agent A Claude instance that can use tools. You are an agent. Subagents are agents you spawn. N/A (process)
Team A named group of agents working together. One leader, multiple teammates. ~/.claude/teams/{name}/config.json
Teammate An agent that joined a team. Has a name, color, inbox. Spawned via Task with team_name + name. Listed in team config
Leader The agent that created the team. Receives teammate messages, approves plans/shutdowns. First member in config
Task A work item with subject, description, status, owner, and dependencies. ~/.claude/tasks/{team}/N.json
Inbox JSON file where an agent receives messages from teammates. ~/.claude/teams/{name}/inboxes/{agent}.json
Message A JSON object sent between agents. Can be text or structured (shutdown_request, idle_notification, etc). Stored in inbox files
Backend How teammates run. Auto-detected: in-process (same Node.js, invisible), tmux (separate panes, visible), iterm2 (split panes in iTerm2). See Spawn Backends. Auto-detected based on environment

How They Connect

flowchart TB
    subgraph TEAM[TEAM]
        Leader[Leader - you]
        T1[Teammate 1]
        T2[Teammate 2]

        Leader <-->|messages via inbox| T1
        Leader <-->|messages via inbox| T2
        T1 <-.->|can message| T2
    end

    subgraph TASKS[TASK LIST]
        Task1["#1 completed: Research<br/>owner: teammate1"]
        Task2["#2 in_progress: Implement<br/>owner: teammate2"]
        Task3["#3 pending: Test<br/>blocked by #2"]
    end

    T1 --> Task1
    T2 --> Task2
    Task2 -.->|unblocks| Task3

Lifecycle

flowchart LR
    A[1. Create Team] --> B[2. Create Tasks]
    B --> C[3. Spawn Teammates]
    C --> D[4. Work]
    D --> E[5. Coordinate]
    E --> F[6. Shutdown]
    F --> G[7. Cleanup]

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,719 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 · 1,719 lines · 67 tokens per session scan B 80a48a7187da

Subscribe to this mod's changes

orchestrating-swarms is a skill published in the GitHub repository gvkhosla/compound-engineering-pi (51 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 12,416 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (reads agent configuration directories). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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