A guide to Orka3, a command-line tool for running macOS virtual machines on Mac hardware. It covers virtual machines, reusable system images, hardware nodes, namespaces, CI/CD pipelines, and early-access Android emulators.

Use it to manage macOS virtual machines and images, configure namespaces, run CI/CD jobs, use service accounts, and check asynchronous operation status.

It explains which commands and authentication methods apply to Intel or Apple Silicon Macs and to local or automated environments.

orka3-cli — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by macstadium

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 macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill --skill orka3-cli

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill/orka3-cli/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill/orka3-cli)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill/orka3-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill/orka3-cli/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill/orka3-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill/orka3-cli.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,411 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00049	$0.02411
Opus 5.5	$0.00020	$0.00964
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00010	$0.00482
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00241

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 4dc63c605d56, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

orka3-cli 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 1mo 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.

orka3-cli/SKILL.md · 196 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 196 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Orka3 CLI Skill

Essential Context

Orka runs macOS VMs on physical Mac hardware in two architectures: Intel (amd64) — Mac Pro, Intel Mac mini, iMac Pro — and Apple Silicon (arm64) — M1/M2/M3/M4 Mac mini, Mac Studio. They have different command sets: ARM gets vm push and imagecache; Intel gets power operations (start/stop/suspend/resume/revert), ISO management, and GPU passthrough.

User tokens expire in 1 hour. All automation and CI/CD must use service accounts (orka3 sa create, orka3 sa token), which support long-lived or non-expiring tokens.

Four execution contexts: local machine (full CLI), CI/CD (ephemeral containers — env vars injected at runtime, failed VMs often auto-deleted), Claude Code (has CLI access — probe with orka3 node list), and chat (no CLI access — answer from documentation only).

Image save, commit, push, and caching are async. Always pair with the status-check command: orka3 image list <IMAGE>, orka3 imagecache info <IMAGE>, or orka3 vm get-push-status <JOB>.

Namespace resolution (v3.5.2+): --namespace flag > ORKA_DEFAULT_NAMESPACE env var > kubeconfig context > orka-default. Some features (shared disk, namespace auto-detection, macOS Tahoe) require v3.5.2+.

Kubernetes upgrade resilience (v3.6+): Most orka3 commands continue working during k8s control-plane upgrades. Only login and vm push require the API server; expect failures for those two until the upgrade completes.

VM network isolation (v3.6+, Apple Silicon only): MacStadium can configure per-cluster allow/deny rules by CIDR block to restrict VM network access. Configured by support, not via CLI. Contact [email protected] to set up.

Android Emulators (Apple Silicon, 3.7+ early access): orka3 emulator deploy|list|delete runs an Android emulator on the same host node as a running macOS VM, connected over an ADB relay. Not GA, not for production. Network isolation is node-level (any VM on the node can reach any emulator on it), NAT only, and ephemeral (no persistent AVD state). See references/commands/emulator-commands.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 196 lines

Files

What ships with it

25 files 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.

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.

1mo ago First seen · 196 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 4dc63c605d56

Subscribe to this mod's changes

orka3-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository macstadium/orka3-cli-agent-skill (3 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 2,411 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-31.

Claude Code Cloud DevOps and cloud claude cli macos macstadium orka

claw-admin

Claw system administration: service management, IM connections, logs, cron, and workspace diagnostics. Use when the user asks to manage claw services, connect/disconnect IM platforms, view logs, or perform system-wide operations.

x-cmd/x-cmd · 48 tokens

x-nets

Enhanced netstat module with cached data and structured output. View network connections, routing tables, and interface statistics in interactive or TSV/CSV formats. Dependency: This is an x-cmd module. Install x-cmd first (see x-cmd skill for installation options). see x-cmd skill for installation.

x-cmd/x-cmd · 69 tokens

x-theme

Change terminal command line prompt theme. Globally manage the display style of all x-cmd interactive components. Supports multiple theme vendors: theme, starship, ohmyposh. Dependency: This is an x-cmd module. Install x-cmd first (see x-cmd skill for installation options). see x-cmd skill for installation.

x-cmd/x-cmd · 74 tokens

orka3-cli