Orca Orchestration

This file is a discovery stub, not the usage guide. The full, version-matched Orca

orchestration reference is served by the orca binary itself — kept out of this file on

purpose so it can never drift from the binary that will actually run your commands.

Engage Orca orchestration whenever you need structured multi-agent coordination: threaded

messages, blocking ask/reply flows, task dispatch, worker_done/escalation waits, task DAGs,

decision gates, coordinator loops, or decomposing work across agents. Use the orca-cli skill

instead for full ownership handoffs ("hand off", "handoff", "handover", "give this to

another agent", "another worktree") when the user did not ask to supervise, monitor, wait

for results, or coordinate a DAG — and for ordinary terminal control, shell commands,

worktree management, and the built-in browser. Coordination requires real Orca runtime

state; never substitute a non-Orca subagent tool.

Resolve the CLI for this session

Choose the executable once and reuse it for every later command:

• If the ORCA_CLI_COMMAND environment variable is set, use its value. Orca exports this

for managed WSL sessions.

• Otherwise, in a dev checkout whose session exposes ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT, use orca-dev.
• Otherwise, on Linux outside an Orca-managed terminal, use orca-ide. Never run bare

orca there — outside Orca's terminals it normally resolves to the

GNOME Orca screen reader (/usr/bin/orca) and starts speech on the user's machine.

• Otherwise, use orca.

Below, ORCA is a placeholder for the executable you resolved. Substitute it before

running anything; do not create a shell variable or run ORCA literally. This works the

same way in POSIX shells, PowerShell, and cmd.exe.

If the selected executable cannot run, report its exact error and stop. Do not fall through

to another executable, which could silently target a different Orca build.

Load the version-matched guide before running Orca commands

ORCA skills get orchestration

That prints the compact, version-matched guide for the exact binary that will handle your

next commands. It covers the normal local coordinator loop. For a conditional action gate

such as remote placement, uncertain release recovery, or expanded DAG work, load only the

reference that gate names with

ORCA skills get orchestration --reference references/<file>.md

(--references lists the names). If that binary rejects --reference, run

ORCA skills get orchestration --full and read the named bundled reference before acting.

Prefer --json. Use the selected executable's --help for commands or flags the guide does

not cover. If a command reports that Orca is not running, start it with ORCA open --json

and retry. If it fails with runtime_access_denied, your sandbox blocked the connection:

re-run it with escalated permissions, and do not run ORCA open or restart Orca. If

skills get is unknown, explain that updating Orca restores the guide; use --help for

read-only discovery and do not guess unsupported commands.