agentleFS
Sign inStart free
jmylchreestjmylchreest/aide/skills/swarm-status/SKILL.md

swarm-status

Skill19 starsChanged 3 months agoMITView on GitHub

Inspect a running swarm — show the agent tree, current tools, halts/pauses, and recent task/message activity for the orchestrator's own swarm.

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

3 rules. About 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 2 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈1

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 2

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Very specific:

    Use that ID as <parent> below — it's the orchestrator session that owns the swarm.

    line 26
  2. Distinctive:

    Halt: if the agent is clearly off-track or burning budget with no progress.

    line 89
  3. Very specific:

    High-priority message: if you want to redirect without stopping — arrives as additionalContext on the next tool call so the model can read …

    line 92

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Swarm Status

Quick orchestrator-side inspection of a live swarm. Run this when you want to see what your spawned subagents are doing right now without halting them or opening the aide-web dashboard.

Steps

1. Resolve current session (your own)

./.aide/bin/aide reflect current-session

Use that ID as <parent> below — it's the orchestrator session that owns the swarm.

2. List agents in this swarm

./.aide/bin/aide agent list --parent=<parent> --json

Returns one record per registered subagent with parent_session, namespace, status, halt, paused, deadline.

3. Active tasks for this swarm

./.aide/bin/aide task list --parent-session=<parent> --json

Filters the project-wide task bucket to ones tagged with this swarm's parent. Look for tasks stuck in claimed without progress.

4. Recent messages

./.aide/bin/aide message list --parent-session=<parent>

Cross-agent comms within this swarm. High-priority messages from the orchestrator are surfaced to subagents on their next tool call by the signals hook.

5. Summarise for the user

Group by agent. For each, report:

  • Status (running / paused / halted)
  • Current tool (read agent:<id>:currentTool via aide state get currentTool --agent=<id> if you want this)
  • Any flags (halt with reason, pause)
  • Open tasks they hold
  • Deadline if set

Example output:

Swarm <parent-id-short> — 3 agents

agent-auth (running):
  current: Edit src/auth/handler.ts
  tasks: 2 in_progress
  no flags

agent-payments (paused):
  reason: scope drift — investigating
  tasks: 1 claimed (#42)
  paused 3m ago

agent-docs (halted):
  reason: repeated rustdoc — see new instinct
  halted 12m ago

When to use halts vs. messages

  • Halt if the agent is clearly off-track or burning budget with no progress. The halt blocks tool calls; the model will respond once with the halt reason then stop.
  • High-priority message if you want to redirect without stopping — arrives as additionalContext on the next tool call so the model can read it and adjust.

Both are sent via aide CLI:

./.aide/bin/aide agent halt <agent-id> --reason="..."
./.aide/bin/aide message send --from=orchestrator --to=<agent-id> \
  --priority=high "redirect: focus on auth.ts only"

Not for

This skill is read-only orchestration. Use the swarm skill itself to launch new agents or resolve worktrees at the end.

Download now (ZIP)

Does it work?

Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.

No reviews yet

People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.

  • It worked
  • Partly
  • It didn't
What did you use it for? e.g. Reviewing pull requests in a Rails app

Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.

Your trail

Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.

Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.

Now do this for your own.

Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.

Check your setup, free