CAO Supervisor Protocols

CAO Supervisor Protocols

Use this skill when supervising worker agents through CLI Agent Orchestrator.

This skill covers how supervisors should dispatch work, decide between assign and handoff, and receive worker results without blocking inbox delivery.

Core MCP Tools

From cao-mcp-server, supervisors orchestrate work with:

• assign(agent_profile, message) for asynchronous work that returns immediately
• handoff(agent_profile, message) for synchronous work that blocks until the worker finishes
• send_message(message, receiver_id=None) for direct messages — receiver_id defaults to the terminal that created yours via handoff/assign
• answer_user_prompt(terminal_id, answer) for answering a Hermes worker that reports waiting_user_answer

Your own terminal ID is available in the CAO_TERMINAL_ID environment variable. CAO appends it to assigned task messages and records it on worker terminals automatically, so you rarely need to handle it yourself.

Choosing Between Assign and Handoff

Use assign when the worker should continue independently and report back later. This is the normal pattern for fan-out work or parallel execution.

Use handoff when the next step is blocked on the worker result. The orchestrator waits for completion, captures the worker output, and returns it directly to the supervisor.

Typical pattern:

• Use assign for analysis, research, or code changes that can run in parallel.
• Use handoff for report generation, blocking review steps, or any task where you need the result before you can continue.

Idle-Based Message Delivery

Assigned workers usually return results through send_message. Those inbox messages are delivered to the supervisor automatically when the supervisor terminal becomes idle.

This means supervisors should:

• Dispatch all planned worker tasks first
• Finish the turn after dispatching work
• Avoid running placeholder shell commands just to wait

Do not keep the terminal busy with sleep, echo, or similar commands while waiting. A busy terminal delays inbox delivery.