What is orca-confirm?

The Orca Team Confirmation skill is a specialized orchestration component designed to manage the approval workflow for multi-agent systems. It streamlines the transition from planning to execution by presenting proposed agent pipelines and intelligently handling user confirmations. Its standout feature is the automatic bypass mode detection, which prevents workflow bottlenecks in automated environments by recognizing when manual input is unavailable and proceeding based on predefined permissions.

When should I use orca-confirm?

orca-confirm is useful in the following scenarios: • Optimizing autonomous agent workflows by automatically detecting bypass permissions to ensure continuous execution without manual intervention. • Enhancing transparency in complex software development tasks by providing users with a structured markdown summary of proposed agent roles, project domains, and potential risks. • Implementing Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) governance by allowing developers to review, confirm, or modify AI-suggested team compositions before resource-intensive tasks begin. • Standardizing communication between different agent modules through structured status reporting (BYPASS, CONFIRMED, or MODIFIED) for reliable system parsing.

name	orca-confirm
description	Handle team confirmation with automatic bypass mode detection for /orca

Orca Team Confirmation Skill

Purpose: Handle user confirmation for agent team selection with automatic bypass mode detection.

Input: User's request is implicitly available. You receive the proposed team and project type as arguments.

Critical Rules (Read First)

Ask for confirmation ONCE using AskUserQuestion
Check response structure immediately after receiving it
If response.answers is empty → BYPASS MODE → Return immediately
NEVER retry AskUserQuestion if first attempt returned blank
Return a structured result that main /orca can parse

Implementation

Step 1: Present Proposed Team (VISIBLE OUTPUT - NOT IN TOOL CALL)

CRITICAL: This must be VISIBLE MARKDOWN OUTPUT, not inside AskUserQuestion.

Output this as regular text so the user can see it:

## Proposed Pipeline

**Request:** [task description]
**Domain:** [PROJECT_TYPE]
**Complexity:** [simple/medium/complex]

### Agent Team
| Role | Agent |
|------|-------|
| Coordination | [grand-architect] |
| Architecture | [architect] |
| Implementation | [builder] |
| Specialists | [list them] |
| Gates | [gate agents] |
| Verification | [verification agent] |

### Files Likely Affected
- [from ContextBundle]

### Risks/Notes
- [any identified]

This output MUST appear BEFORE you call AskUserQuestion.

Step 2: Ask for Confirmation (ONCE ONLY - SIMPLE QUESTION)

Use AskUserQuestion with these exact options:

Question: "Proceed with this team?"
Options:
1. "Yes, proceed" → Proceed with proposed team
2. "Modify team" → Ask user what to change

Step 3: Check Response Structure

Immediately after AskUserQuestion returns, check the response:

# Pseudo-code for what you MUST check:
if response is None or response.get("answers") is None or len(response.get("answers", {})) == 0:
    # BYPASS MODE DETECTED
    # User has bypass permissions enabled
    # They CANNOT respond to questions
    # Proceed immediately with proposed team

    Output:
    " Proceeding with proposed team (bypass mode detected - confirmation unavailable)

    Proposed Team: [list team]

    You can interrupt if you need changes."

    # Return to /orca with: BYPASS|original_team

else:
    # INTERACTIVE MODE
    # User provided an answer
    user_answer = response["answers"][first_question_key]

    if user_answer == "Yes, proceed":
        Output: " Team confirmed"
        # Return to /orca with: CONFIRMED|original_team

    elif user_answer == "Modify team":
        # Ask user what to change
        # Adjust team based on their input
        # Return to /orca with: MODIFIED|new_team_list

Step 4: Return Result to /orca

Format: STATUS|agent1,agent2,agent3

Valid statuses:

BYPASS - Bypass mode detected, proceeding with proposed team
CONFIRMED - User confirmed proposed team
MODIFIED - User requested changes, new team provided

Examples:

BYPASS|swiftui-developer,swiftdata-specialist,swift-testing-specialist
CONFIRMED|design-reviewer,accessibility-specialist,ui-engineer
MODIFIED|nextjs-14-specialist,tailwind-specialist,design-reviewer

Output Format

Your final output must be:

[Status message to user explaining what happened]

RESULT: STATUS|agent,list,here

The RESULT line is what /orca will parse.

Examples

Example 1: Bypass Mode (Blank Response)

Input: Proposed team for iOS project AskUserQuestion returns: {"answers": {}} Output:

 Proceeding with proposed team (bypass mode detected - confirmation unavailable)

Proposed Team:
• swiftui-developer
• swiftdata-specialist
• swift-testing-specialist

You can interrupt if you need changes.

RESULT: BYPASS|swiftui-developer,swiftdata-specialist,swift-testing-specialist

Example 2: User Confirms

Input: Proposed team for Next.js project AskUserQuestion returns: {"answers": {"q1": "Yes, proceed"}} Output:

 Team confirmed by user

Proceeding with:
• nextjs-14-specialist
• tailwind-specialist
• design-reviewer

RESULT: CONFIRMED|nextjs-14-specialist,tailwind-specialist,design-reviewer

Example 3: User Modifies

Input: Proposed team for backend project User says: "Remove quality-validator, add test-engineer" Output:

 Team modified per user request

Original: backend-engineer, quality-validator
Modified: backend-engineer, test-engineer

RESULT: MODIFIED|backend-engineer,test-engineer

Testing Checklist

Before returning results, verify:

Asked AskUserQuestion exactly ONCE
Checked response.answers structure explicitly
Returned RESULT line in correct format
Did NOT retry on blank response
Showed clear message to user about what's happening

Common Mistakes to Avoid

DON'T:

"I didn't receive a response, let me ask again..."
[Retries AskUserQuestion]

DO:

" Proceeding with proposed team (bypass mode detected)"
RESULT: BYPASS|team,list