orch-architect

orch-architect is a skill for Claude Code from kninetimmy/orch. It costs 80 tokens per session (1,544 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of working rules for operating an Orch-managed code repository from Claude Code. Orch is the tool that defines repository permissions, work modes, task routing, and delivery status.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a repository contains a .orchestrator directory, especially before planning changes or modifying tracked files.
Why use it?
It prevents accidental edits outside approved work areas and tells the agent where to get the repository’s current policy instead of guessing.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: PreToolUse hook event. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code.

Part of the orch plugin — 3 skills, 3 commands, 5 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when a repository contains a .orchestrator directory, especially before planning changes or modifying tracked files.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect
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 kninetimmy/orch --skill orch-architect
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kninetimmy/orch

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install orch, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills, 3 commands, 5 agents, 2 hooks.

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 orch-architect

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect/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 orch-architect

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kninetimmy/orch/orch-architect.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,544 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.
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 $0.00080 $0.01544
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.00772
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00309
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00154

Measured 9d ago against content hash 75c240260bc1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

orch-architect 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.

adapters/claude/skills/orch-architect/SKILL.md · 135 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 135 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Orch Architect

You are the Architect for this Orch-managed repository. The orch binary is the only place policy lives: what is writable, how work routes to a model, what a Delivery run's state is. This skill never restates that policy — it tells you which engine call answers each question and how to present the answer. If you find yourself reasoning out a routing, containment, or mode rule from first principles, stop: call the engine instead.

You never edit tracked files directly

The PreToolUse hook (orch guard claude) enforces this mechanically: in Assist mode every tracked-file write is denied; in Delivery mode a write is only allowed inside a registered issue worktree whose issue is in a writable phase. (The guard cannot tell the Architect from a subagent — staying out of worktrees yourself is your discipline, not the hook's.) A guard denial is policy, not a bug to work around. Do not retry the write a different way, do not ask the human to disable the hook, and do not shell out through Bash to route around it. Report the denial and explain what it means (wrong mode, wrong directory) and what would change it (entering Delivery, or being inside the right worktree).

The Architect's own job is orchestration: reading state, presenting decisions, and spawning the five orch-* subagents. Actual file changes are the subagents' job, each confined to its own worktree.

Never re-derive engine rules

Routing (which model and effort an issue gets), containment (which directory a write may land in), and mode (Assist vs. Delivery, and what each permits) are computed by the orch binary from the committed configuration and the plan. Do not:

  • Guess what model an issue "should" route to — read it off DispatchResult.executor / .reviewer, or the plan gate's per-issue executor / reviewer.
  • Decide for yourself whether a write should be allowed — let the guard hook answer that.
  • Paper over an engine error with your own workaround.

When orch run <verb> refuses (exit 1), present the stderr message to the human verbatim. Do not paraphrase it into something friendlier, and do not retry blind — a refusal is the engine's answer, not a transient fault.

Read the full file on GitHub · 135 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 · 135 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A 75c240260bc1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

orch-architect is a skill published in the GitHub repository kninetimmy/orch (21 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 1,544 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

local-ai-agents

Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…

microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners · 200 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

insight-error-page

Write or audit an insight-kind error page for the Next.js dev overlay. Use when creating a new errors/ .mdx page, auditing an existing one, or checking that a page matches the framework fix cards. Covers page structure, title alignment, FixCard cards with Copy prompt button, code snippets, terminology verification…

vercel/next.js · 83 tokens

next-cache-components-optimizer

Drive a Next.js route to instant navigation by setting up an agentic loop, under Cache Components / PPR, on initial load (hard navigation) and client-side navigation (soft navigation). Encode the goal as a failing @next/playwright instant() e2e and work it to green, one verified route at a time; the shipped test then…

vercel/next.js · 170 tokens

next-partial-prefetching-adoption

Turn on Partial Prefetching in a Next.js app and work through the insights it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable or adopt Partial Prefetching, flip the partialPrefetching flag, opt routes in with export const prefetch = 'partial', audit Link prefetch={true} behavior, preserve existing prefetched UI with…

vercel/next.js · 103 tokens