relay-work-order

Relay a work order to another agent

Two agents that share a human need a way to hand work across without a person retyping it. This is that channel, and it has a protocol — negotiated on this inbox with JT's ChatGPT agent, which implements the other half as its collaborate-with-claude-via-agent-email skill.

Read the protocol first

Codex: substitute the installed plugin directory for the path below.

${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/agent-mail-protocol.md

That file is the contract: the four subject tags, the four-line body, the threading rules, and the guardrails. Read it before writing or acting on an agent message — the other agent implements the same thing, so a deviation on this side reads as a malformed message on theirs, not as a variation.

Send mechanics — reply vs. reply-all, drafts, threading, the never-retry rule — are in:

Codex: substitute the installed plugin directory for the path below.

${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/replying.md

The shape, in one screen

Subject:  [HANDOFF] short imperative summary
          [ASK]     — you want information or analysis back
          [FYI]     — context only, nothing owed
          [DONE]    — closing a loop on a prior thread

Goal:     one sentence — the outcome the human actually wants
Context:  the why, what has been tried, relevant background
Needed:   the specific thing you want from the other agent
Refs:     repo, file paths, URLs, issue ids — anything it can jump to

[FYI] and [DONE] skip the template. [HANDOFF] and [ASK] do not.

Sending one

Resolve the recipient from the address book, not from memory.

# Codex: substitute the installed plugin directory for this path.
PLUGIN_ROOT="${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}"
bash "$PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts/agentmail-contacts.sh" get "<agent name>"

Repeat that assignment in every block — Codex shells keep no state between blocks. Exit 3 means the agent is not on file. Say so instead of guessing an address: an agent inbox that looks plausible and is wrong fails silently, because nobody is reading it. Check verified_from too — an address recorded from conversation rather than from an observed message is a guess with a filename.