kimi-delegate

Kimi Delegate

You are the orchestrator. Hand a bounded coding task to a separate implementer - the Kimi Code CLI - then review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; Kimi does the typing in its own session; you verify and commit.

The loop needs only a shell command and file access, so any comparable orchestrator can drive it.

When NOT to use this

• The task is small enough to do inline; delegation overhead is not worth it.
• The kimi CLI is not installed or authenticated.
• You need a CLI-enforced read-only implementer. Headless Kimi has no read-only mode.

Prerequisites (check once)

1. Install Kimi Code with brew install kimi-code on macOS/Linux, or use the native installer from the official Kimi Code documentation.
2. Authenticate with kimi login (device-code flow, no TUI), or use /login in the TUI.
3. Confirm kimi --version succeeds.
4. Work in, or point --cd at, the target git repository.

Choose the model alias

Kimi uses default_model from its config.toml when --model is omitted. To choose another model alias, pass --model <alias from your kimi config>. Model aliases are user-defined config keys; use one the human has configured rather than inventing one.

The loop

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

1. Write the brief

Kimi sees only the text you send plus what it can inspect in the workspace - no chat history or shared context. Include the goal, current state, what to change, what to leave untouched, the project's actual gates, and a report contract. Tell Kimi not to commit. Keep one task per brief. See references/writing-the-brief.md.

2. Dispatch

For Codex orchestration of background work, install and configure the separate codex-background support utility first. If its MCP tools or registry are missing, stop and report the setup requirement; do not silently fall back to model-driven polling. Then invoke its registered delegate_run MCP tool once in place of the shell example below. Follow that skill for structured common arguments, unchanged provider flags and reattachment by runId. Keep the request pending until completion, then continue this skill's review and landing steps. Other orchestrators keep the shell workflow below.

Use the bundled helper. It wraps Kimi's headless prompt mode, captures the structured event stream, and writes result.json. (<skill-dir> is the installed folder containing this SKILL.md.)

node "<skill-dir>/scripts/relay.mjs" --brief brief.txt --cd /path/to/repo
# choose a configured model alias:       add --model <alias from your kimi config>
# resume the most recent session:        add --resume-last  (delta brief only)
# resume a specific session:             add --session <id> (delta brief only)
# hard time limit (watchdog):            add --timeout 2h  (the 30m default suits short runs; implementation briefs routinely need 1-2h)
# see all options:                       node .../relay.mjs --help

The child process's cwd pins the workspace. Use repeatable --add-dir flags only for extra workspace directories. The relay writes artifacts under the system temp dir by default and never commits. See references/dispatch-and-poll.md.

3. Wait for completion

Codex using codex-background keeps the original MCP request pending: no model-driven sleep, status or log polling. Use delegate_wait only to reattach after an interrupted request.

The helper blocks until Kimi finishes. Run it with the orchestrator's background-command facility, or background it in the shell and poll for result.json. A pre-run usage error exits 2 and writes no result; a missing kimi exits 127 and writes status: "kimi_unavailable".

Trust process state and the working tree over a progress display. Completion means the process exited and result.json exists. Kimi'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

Treat Kimi's final message and gate claims as claims:

• Re-run the project's gates yourself.
• Read the diff against the brief, starting with touchedFiles.
• Run relevant guard skills if installed.
• Round-trip migrations and grep for dangling references after removals or renames.

See references/review-and-land.md.

5. Land it

The implementer edits the working tree; the orchestrator commits. Commit only after the gates pass and the diff holds. If rework is needed, send a delta brief with --resume-last or --session <id>, then review again.

Autonomy and permissions

In headless -p mode, Kimi always runs in auto permission mode and never asks for approval. Kimi rejects --prompt combined with --yolo, --auto, or --plan, so the relay passes none of them and offers no --read-only or --full-access option. There is no CLI-enforced read-only mode: inspect touchedFiles and the diff after every run. That diff, not a flag, is the guarantee of what changed.

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. Two limits remain: surface, don't absorb (report Kimi's design decisions, defensible-but-unasked turns, and non-blocking nitpicks) and stop for scope changes (if correct completion needs going beyond the brief, ask instead of expanding the mandate). See references/review-and-land.md.

References

• references/writing-the-brief.md - structure, report contract, real gates, argv delivery, and delta briefs.
• references/dispatch-and-poll.md - flags, artifacts, result.json, polling, and failure recovery.
• references/review-and-land.md - review checklist, commit boundary, and rework through Kimi sessions.
• references/multi-task-queues.md - sequential queues, constraint carry-forward, progress tracking, and the final coherence pass.