orca

Orca Session Management

Coordinates agent sessions running inside the Orca IDE (stablyai/orca) — finding a specific running session and delivering work to it, launching new sessions, and installing Orca's own bundled skills into other harnesses.

Topic Dispatch

When this skill is invoked with a topic specifier (e.g., /orca send or Skill("orca", "send")), load and follow only the matching topic file (send.md). Do not echo the Topics table or summarize other topics in the response. The Topics table below is an index for invocations without a topic specifier — it is not user-facing output when a topic is named.

Topics

Resolve the CLI (all topics)

Every topic in this skill needs the Orca CLI executable. Resolve it once per session and reuse it:

1. If ORCA_CLI_COMMAND is set, use its value (Orca exports this for managed WSL sessions).
2. Otherwise, in a dev checkout exposing ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT, use orca-dev.
3. Otherwise, on Linux outside an Orca-managed terminal, use orca-ide. Never run bare orca there — it normally resolves to the GNOME Orca screen reader and starts speech on the user's machine.
4. Otherwise, use orca.

Below, ORCA is a placeholder for the resolved executable. Substitute it before running anything — do not create a shell variable or run ORCA literally.

If the resolved executable fails, report the exact error and stop. Do not fall through to another executable — that could silently target a different Orca build.

Confirm the app is reachable before anything else:

ORCA status --json

If result.app.running is false, start it with ORCA open --json first. Prefer --json for every agent-driven call.

Command source of truth

Do not hardcode Orca CLI flags in this skill or memorize them from a prior session. Orca releases change subcommands and flags; a cached copy drifts from the binary that will actually run the command. Before running an unfamiliar command, confirm its current shape with:

ORCA skills get orca-cli
ORCA skills get orchestration

These print the complete, version-matched guide for the exact binary in this session. This skill's topic files hold the parts that don't change across releases (the disambiguation policy, the self-targeting guard, the harness install matrix) — not a copy of Orca's flag reference.

Self-identification

Every command in this skill that talks to another terminal must first know which terminal it is itself, to avoid ever targeting its own pane. Orca exports ORCA_PANE_KEY as : inside every managed terminal. If it is unset, this session is not running inside an Orca-managed terminal and send must refuse to run (see send.md).

Topic Dependencies

orca
  ├─→ send: uses the CLI-resolution + self-identification rules above
  ├─→ launch: uses the CLI-resolution rules above
  └─→ install: independent — only needs the CLI resolved when verifying a Claude/OpenClaw install

• send and launch both call into the running Orca app; install mostly edits files on disk and only touches the CLI to confirm an install landed.
• For task DAGs, ask/reply flows, or coordinator loops between agents, use Orca's own orchestration skill directly (ORCA skills get orchestration) — this skill does not reimplement it. send covers the simpler case: "deliver this prompt to that terminal."