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name: muse-delegate description: >- Delegate a coding task to Muse Code (muse) as a background implementer, then review its diff and land it yourself. Use this whenever the user wants to hand implementation work to Muse — phrasings like "have Muse do X", "delegate this to Muse", "run it through Muse", or "use Muse to implement/fix/refactor" — or wants to run a queue of coding tasks through Muse while staying the reviewer. Prefer it when the user will review the diff and commit it themselves. It applies only when the user wants that separate muse exec implementer run: if you are Muse yourself and the user simply asks you to write the code, do it directly. DO NOT USE for tasks small enough to do inline. license: MIT compatibility: Requires the muse CLI installed and authenticated (muse login or META_API_KEY), Node 18+, and git. Upstream's launcher targets UNIX (macOS/Linux). The orchestrating agent must be able to run shell commands and read files. Shell examples assume bash/zsh. metadata: version: 0.5.0

Muse Delegate

You are the orchestrator. This skill lets you hand a bounded coding task to a separate implementer — Muse Code (muse) — then review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; Muse does the typing in its own exec run; you verify and commit.

Nothing here is specific to one orchestrating agent. The loop needs only the ability to run a shell command and read a file, so any agent with those two capabilities can drive it. The full delegate → review → commit loop has been run with Claude Code as the orchestrator. Other orchestrators remain unproven.

When NOT to use this

• The task is small enough to just do inline — delegation overhead is not worth it.
• The muse CLI is not installed or not authenticated (run muse login, or set META_API_KEY).
• You want to write the code yourself.
• You are on native Windows and need a supported launcher. Upstream's muse launcher is Darwin/Linux only; this skill still ships in the Windows contract matrix, but a live Windows dispatch is not a supported Muse install.

Read this before the first dispatch: the autonomy model

Headless Muse is muse exec only. muse resume is the interactive TUI and is never invoked. --resume-last is rejected; continue a run with --session <id> (Muse's --session-id).

Write runs keep Muse's sandbox on and pass --disable-approval so a headless run cannot hang on a tool-approval prompt. They also pass --trust-workspace and --user-input-auto-resolve. That is not --yolo and not --full-access — do not invent either as the default. --trust-workspace loads the target repo's rules and skills into the implementer run, and nothing in the relay narrows the implementer's tool set inside the sandbox; the brief is what bounds it to the task.

--read-only adds --disable-write (non-shell filesystem writes) and --disable-shell. Approval stays disabled so the review cannot block on a prompt either.

--provider echo|meta is a relay-only flag for tests and explicit probes. It is not a fleet dial.

Prerequisites (check once)

1. muse --version succeeds. If not, install Muse Code and run muse login (or export META_API_KEY).
2. Confirm which muse is on PATH. command -v muse shows the active launcher. The relay records the version it ran into result.json.
3. You are in (or will point --cd at) the target git repository.

Choose the implementer model

Muse has a configured default model, so a fresh run may omit --model. Pass --model or a fleet --lane that sets one when you need to pin a catalog id. On a resumed --session run, omit --model to keep the session's model. If the human has not named a usable set, ask before guessing a metered id.

More depth: references/writing-the-brief.md.

The loop

Run these five steps per task. Steps 1, 4, and 5 are your judgment; 2 and 3 are mechanical.

1. Write the brief

Muse sees only the text you send plus what it can read from the working tree — no chat history, no shared context. Everything the task needs goes in the brief: the goal, the current state, what to change, what to leave untouched, the project's actual gate commands (discover them from the repo's AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md/Makefile — do not assume), and a report contract. Tell Muse it will not commit (you will). Keep one task per brief. Full guidance and a template: references/writing-the-brief.md.

2. Dispatch

Send the brief to Muse with the bundled helper. It wraps muse exec --json --prompt-file, captures the run, and writes a structured result.json. (<skill-dir> below is this skill's installed directory — the folder containing this SKILL.md.)

node "<skill-dir>/scripts/relay.mjs" --brief brief.txt --cd /path/to/repo
# optional model:                           add --model <id>
# fleet lane from delegate-setup:           add --lane <name>  (dials apply; flags still win)
# reasoning intensity:                      add --effort none|minimal|low|medium|high|xhigh|max|ultra
# read-only (no non-shell writes, no shell): add --read-only
# continue a specific Muse session:         add --session <id>  (delta brief only; no --resume-last)
# hard time limit (watchdog):               add --timeout 2h  (default: off; implementation runs routinely need 1-2h)
# see all options:                          node .../relay.mjs --help

The helper writes artifacts to a temp dir, so the repo under review stays clean. It never commits — see step 5. Mechanics, flags, and the result.json shape: references/dispatch-and-poll.md.

3. Wait for completion

The helper blocks until Muse finishes, so back it with whatever your orchestrator offers and resume when it returns:

• Claude Code: run the Bash call with run_in_background: true; you are notified on completion.
• Plain shell / other agents: run it in the foreground for short tasks, or background it and poll the result file. The run is done when result.json exists with a status. (A pre-run usage error — bad args or an empty brief — instead exits with code 2 and writes no result file, so check the exit code too. A missing muse binary exits 127 but does write a result.json with status muse_unavailable. --resume-last is a usage error: headless resume is --session <id>.)

Do not trust progress trackers over reality: a run is finished when result.json is written and the process has exited. Muse can exit 0 without a run.terminal.completed event; the relay reports that as failed, not completed. The implementer's full report is the finalMessage field in result.json (also printed in full on stdout between the report markers).

4. Review — do not trust the self-report

Muse's result.json includes its own final message and any gate claims. Re-verify, don't accept:

• Re-run the project's gates yourself (the test/lint/build commands from step 1). Never take "gates passed" on faith.
• Read the diff against the brief: did Muse do what was asked, nothing more (scope creep) and nothing less? touchedFiles in the result is your starting point.
• Run the relevant guard skills on the diff if you have them installed (clean-code-guard, test-guard, etc. from guard-skills) — this skill produces the work; those skills judge it.
• For schema/migration changes, round-trip them; for removals, grep for dangling references.

Full checklist: references/review-and-land.md.

5. Land it

The implementer edits the working tree; the orchestrator commits. Committing should be the act of the party that verified the work. Only after the gates pass and the diff holds:

• Commit the verified work yourself, with a clear message.
• If it needs changes, send a delta brief with --session <id> (don't restate the whole task) and review again. There is no headless --resume-last.

Authorization model

Delegation is something the human opts into. Once they have ("run this queue", "proceed"), committing verified, gate-passing work is the agreed contract — that is the whole point. Two limits on that mandate: surface, don't absorb (report Muse's design decisions, defensible-but-unasked turns, and non-blocking nitpicks rather than silently keeping them) and stop for scope changes (if correct completion needs going beyond the brief, ask — don't expand the mandate yourself). The full treatment is in references/review-and-land.md.

References

• references/writing-the-brief.md — how to write a brief Muse can execute blind: structure, XML blocks, the report contract, embedding the real gate commands.
• references/dispatch-and-poll.md — relay.mjs flags, the result.json contract, backgrounding per orchestrator, and recovery when a run misbehaves.
• references/review-and-land.md — the review checklist, the commit boundary, and the rework cycle via --session.
• references/multi-task-queues.md — running a sequential queue: carrying constraints forward, progress tracking, and the end-of-run coherence check.