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Subagent protocols

Skill clankercode/agent-file-chat/skills/subagent-protocols

Two reusable agent skills (simple-agent-comms, simple-agent-room) + Python CLI tools for inter-agent messaging on disk. JSON-Lines rooms, inotify-driven monitors, no broker dependency. Agent never needs to know the file paths.

Install
npx -y skills add clankercode/agent-file-chat --skill subagent-protocols

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

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What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Use when setting up parent<->subagent communication or dispatching subagents and wanting a clean inbox handshake. This is the general pattern: the coordinator decides per subagent whether to monitor, append on demand, or stay one-way. The simple-agent-comms and simple-agent-room sibling skills are specialized variants that add a persistent Monitor.

SKILL.md

3.2 KB, 629 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Use this skill to establish a small file-backed startup handshake between a coordinator and subagent.

  • If you are a subagent (you were dispatched by another agent): read for-subagents.md and follow it.
  • If you are a coordinator (you are dispatching subagents): read for-coordinators.md and follow it.

Where this fits

The three sibling skills cover a spectrum of inter-agent patterns:

skillrolecostnoise
subagent-protocols (this)general pattern — handshake + ad-hoc inboxesnone (no Monitor, no shared log)none (each subagent's traffic stays isolated)
simple-agent-commsspecialized: 1:1 streamingone Monitor per subagentnone per subagent
simple-agent-roomspecialized: N:N broadcast via shared logone Monitor totaleveryone sees everything

subagent-protocols is the general alternative: you decide per subagent whether to (a) set up a Monitor and stream, (b) append on demand, or (c) stay one-way. The two simple-agent-* skills are opinionated variants that commit to one choice for you (comms → a per-subagent Monitor; room → one shared log Monitor for everyone).

Pick the general pattern when neither specialization fits:

  • You have many subagents and want each conversation to stay private without spinning up N Monitors.
  • The set of subagents is uneven — a few hot ones worth streaming, most just need occasional pings.
  • You want to decide later whether each subagent needs streaming or just ad-hoc access; the handshake gives you enough to start talking either way.

Pick simple-agent-comms when you have one subagent and want push-mirror-push two-way streaming with zero design decisions.

Pick simple-agent-room when you have many subagents that need to discover each other and can tolerate a shared broadcast log.

What's actually in this skill

A pure protocol — no CLI scripts beyond the bundled watch-file.sh:

  • A one-line startup handshake the subagent appends to the coordinator's inbox (id, capabilities, its own inbox path).
  • A convention for per-subagent inbox paths under ~/.cache/agent-comms/<repo>/.
  • Three post-handshake modes the coordinator can pick from (stream / ad-hoc / one-way — see for-coordinators.md).
  • The watch-file.sh helper so the coordinator can run a Monitor on any inbox path it ends up wanting to tail.

What ships with it: 3 files

6.0 KB alongside SKILL.md, 1 of them executable

Keep looking

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