agents-at-scale-ark: Skill for Claude Code

.claude/skills/multi-branch-cluster-setup/SKILL.md

multi-branch-cluster-setup is a skill for Claude Code from mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark. It costs 67 tokens per session (1,793 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A setup workflow that creates one isolated Minikube Kubernetes cluster for each Git branch or worktree. A worktree is a separate working copy of a repository, while a Kubernetes cluster runs applications in containers.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare parallel branch development with separate clusters, worktrees, ports, and DevSpace contexts.
Why use it?
It lets developers work on multiple branches at the same time without their test environments interfering with one another.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

This is mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on agents-at-scale-ark itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything agents-at-scale-ark configures →

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is helm upgrade --install ark-api ./services/ark-api/chart \.

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/main/.claude/skills/multi-branch-cluster-setup/SKILL.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark

Made for: Claude Code.

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 multi-branch-cluster-setup

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/multi-branch-cluster-setup/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/multi-branch-cluster-setup)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/multi-branch-cluster-setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/multi-branch-cluster-setup/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 multi-branch-cluster-setup

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/multi-branch-cluster-setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark/multi-branch-cluster-setup.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 1,793 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 $0.00067 $0.01793
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00897
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00359
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00179

Measured 7d ago against content hash b92e00cf52ae, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

multi-branch-cluster-setup 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 7d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 4 executable files (scripts/deploy-helm.sh, scripts/port-forward.sh, scripts/setup-clusters.sh, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

.claude/skills/multi-branch-cluster-setup/SKILL.md · 177 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 177 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Multi-Branch Cluster Setup

Provisions one minikube cluster per branch supplied by the user. The number of clusters matches the number of branches — 2 branches = 2 clusters, 4 branches = 4 clusters, etc.

Cluster naming and port assignment (dynamic, based on branches provided):

# Cluster name Worktree Branch Dashboard API Gateway
1 ark-cluster-1 $ARK_REPO (main repo, no worktree needed if branch 1 = current) branch 1 :3274 :8080 :8090
2 ark-cluster-2 /tmp/ark-worktree-<branch2-slug> branch 2 :3275 :8081 :8091
3 ark-cluster-3 /tmp/ark-worktree-<branch3-slug> branch 3 :3276 :8082 :8092
N ark-cluster-N /tmp/ark-worktree-<branchN-slug> branch N :3273+N :8079+N :8089+N

Port formula: Dashboard = 3273+N, API = 8079+N, Gateway = 8089+N

Prerequisites check

Run before starting:

minikube version && kubectl version --client && helm version --short && devspace version && docker info | grep "Total Memory"

Set your repo path (replace with your actual checkout location):

export ARK_REPO=~/agents-at-scale-ark  # adjust if cloned elsewhere

Docker Desktop memory requirement: ~0.7 GB base + (N × 2.2 GB). For 3 clusters: ~7 GB minimum. Set via Docker Desktop → Settings → Resources → Memory.

Step 1 — Extract branches from the user's request

If the user's message contains branch names (e.g. "create clusters with branch1 branch2 branch3"), extract all of them directly — do NOT ask for confirmation.

  • The number of clusters = the number of branches provided
  • Assign each branch to ark-cluster-N (N = 1, 2, 3...)
  • Branch slug = branch name with / replaced by -
  • Branch 1 uses $ARK_REPO directly if it matches the current checkout; otherwise also gets a worktree
  • Branches 2..N each get a worktree at /tmp/ark-worktree-<branchN-slug>

If no branches are provided in the message, ask how many clusters and which branches.

Read the full file on GitHub · 177 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 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.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 177 lines · 67 tokens per session scan A b92e00cf52ae

Subscribe to this mod's changes

multi-branch-cluster-setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository mckinsey/agents-at-scale-ark (422 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 1,793 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

container-manager-kubernetes-operations

Full operational Kubernetes surface via the container-manager-mcp MCP server — workloads (pods/rollouts/StatefulSets/DaemonSets/ReplicaSets/Jobs/CronJobs), config (ConfigMaps/Secrets/Namespaces/CRDs/patch), networking (Ingress/native Services/NetworkPolicy/DNS), storage (PV/PVC/StorageClass/snapshots/CSI), RBAC…

Knuckles-Team/container-manager-mcp · 189 tokens

k8s-ops

Opinionated multi-step Kubernetes workflows on top of the k8s-mcp server. Encodes tool-sequencing logic and failure-mode decision trees for deploying from a repo, debugging pods/rollouts, performing safe restarts, and auditing cluster posture. Use when the user asks to deploy, diagnose, restart, roll out, or audit…

jingyanjiang/k8s-mcp · 77 tokens

kubernetes-mesh-provisioner

Kubernetes Mesh Provisioner atomic skill. Stands up an RKE2 cluster (server + agents) with Cilium CNI and the NVIDIA GPU device plugin, the Kubernetes parallel of swarm-mesh-provisioner. Idempotent — re-runnable.

Knuckles-Team/container-manager-mcp · 60 tokens

aiq-deploy

Use when asked to install, deploy, run, validate, troubleshoot, or stop NVIDIA AI-Q Blueprint infrastructure.

NVIDIA/skills · 27 tokens

dynamo-recipe-runner

Select, validate, patch, and deploy existing NVIDIA Dynamo Kubernetes recipes. Use for model/backend/GPU/deployment-mode recipe bring-up; use router-starter for router-only mode work and troubleshoot for broken deployments.

NVIDIA/skills · 49 tokens

timoni

Use when deploying applications to Kubernetes with Timoni. Covers installing and upgrading module instances from OCI registries, composing multi-app deployments with bundles, injecting values from clusters or CI with runtimes, targeting multiple clusters, and authoring, testing, signing and publishing modules with CUE.

stefanprodan/timoni · 59 tokens