Orchestrator harnesses

rota orchestrate starts the orchestrator in the agent named by orchestrator.harness: claude (default), codex, hermes or opencode. Workers are a separate choice (--kind).

rota config set orchestrator.harness hermes
rota orchestrate --dry-run     # shows the command and first prompt

The prompt is the last argument, on the first start and on every keepalive restart. That is why the Hermes and opencode commands end in -q and --prompt.

Setup for Hermes and opencode

Both read .agents/skills, so the Codex install covers them:

rota skills install --scope project --agent codex
hermes skills trust            # Hermes only: a repo's skills stay off until trusted

rota must be on PATH for the agent.

Solo mode

The skill’s solo mode needs a subagent that can be pinned to a worktree. Only Claude Code has one. In any other harness, run the round in tmux or herdr (rota config set round.dispatch tmux); the skill tells the orchestrator to refuse solo and say so.

Asking the maintainer

The skill asks in plain language. Claude Code renders that as AskUserQuestion; elsewhere it is an ordinary message in the session.

Adopting work another tool started

Some tools make their own branch and worktree: Codex’s managed worktrees, Claude Code agent teams, a cloud session that pushes a branch. Rota does not launch these and cannot read their panes, but it can track the branch, so the overlap check, status, gate, train and reap treat it like round work.

rota worker adopt codex/612-thing --issue 612          # a branch
rota worker adopt ~/work/thing-wt --issue 612 --pr <url>  # a worktree of this repo

The slot is external: no host, no session. Rota runs the same file-overlap check as round assign and exits 4 with blockedBy: overlap on a blocking clash (--accept-overlap skips only that). It also refuses a branch or an issue that a slot already holds (registered, held). The path must be a worktree in git worktree list for this repo.

What changes for an adopted slot:

• rota round status shows external as its host, and a state worked out from the forge and git: done when its PR is open, busy when the branch is ahead of the base with no PR, idle otherwise, unknown while the forge cannot be reached. No ROTA-DONE is expected; the PR is the signal.
• rota worker dispatch refuses it (blockedBy: host). Talk to that agent in its own tool.
• rota worker gate <slot> and rota worker train gate its PR like any other. There are no relays to check, so the provenance step passes with None for approvals.
• After the merge the slot is released: the registry entry goes, the worktree and branch stay, because rota did not create them. rota reap then lists the merged branch for you to delete. rota worker gate --prune or rota round wind-down --prune removes the worktree and branch instead, and skips a dirty worktree.

To catch these branches without naming each one, set round.adoptPattern to a glob over the branch names:

rota config set round.adoptPattern 'codex/*'

rota round reconcile then reports an unregistered-branch for each matching branch that no slot holds and that is not merged. --apply adopts the ones whose name carries an issue number (<agent>/<issue>-<slug>, issue-N, #N); the others stay listed with needs --issue. See parallel rounds.

Last verified (2026-10-04)

Dated snapshot, not a compatibility guarantee. Checked 2026-10-04 on Codex 0.159.2, Hermes v0.21.5 and opencode 1.17.9, in a scratch git repo with one probe skill per location.

• Codex. See Codex skills. Tab-mode round end to end (herdr, Codex 0.159.2 orchestrator and Codex workers, file backend, no forge): two tasks assigned, built, merged with rota worker gate and wound down clean. It needed the worker contract found under .agents/skills (rota round assign read only Claude roots until this change), and it ran with approval_policy=never and sandbox_mode=danger-full-access because Codex’s sandbox did not initialise on the test machine.
• Hermes. hermes skills list shows a .agents/skills probe only after hermes skills trust; a .claude/skills probe never loads. hermes chat -s <skill> -Q -q <prompt> resolved the trusted project skill and the model answered; an unknown name fails with Unknown skill(s). Not verified: a full orchestrator round, and whether a literal /rota-orchestrate typed as the seed prompt dispatches as a slash command (the launcher avoids it by using -s).
• opencode. opencode debug skill listed probes in .agents/skills, .claude/skills and .opencode/skills. Not verified: a model session loading the skill (the account had no funds), and a full round. opencode has no slash command for skills; the model loads one through its skill tool, so the prompt names the skill in words and may need a nudge.