vibe-delegate

Vibe Delegate

You are the orchestrator. Hand a bounded coding task to a separate implementer — the Mistral Vibe CLI (vibe) — then review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; Vibe 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 vibe CLI is not installed or authenticated.

Prerequisites (check once)

1. Install uv, then Mistral Vibe:
   • uv tool install mistral-vibe
2. Configure your API key with vibe --setup, or set MISTRAL_API_KEY in the environment.
3. Confirm vibe --version succeeds.
4. Work in, or point --cd at, the target git repository.

The loop

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

1. Write the brief

Vibe 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 Vibe not to commit. Keep one task per brief. See references/writing-the-brief.md.

Default mode cannot approve most shell commands headlessly, so the orchestrator runs the gates. Ask Vibe to run them only when the human explicitly authorized --full-access.

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 Vibe'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
# limit turns for cost control:           add --max-turns <n>
# indicative price threshold/token cap:  add --max-price <usd> --max-tokens <n>
# planning/read-only:                     add --plan-only
# unrestricted shell and tools:           add --full-access (explicit authorization required)
# resume the most recent session:         add --resume-last  (delta brief only)
# resume a specific session:              add --session <id> (delta brief only)
# see all options:                        node .../relay.mjs --help

The child process's cwd pins the workspace. 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 Vibe 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 vibe exits 127 and writes status: "vibe_unavailable". The watchdog writes status: "timeout"; terminating the relay on POSIX writes status: "aborted" after stopping Vibe's process tree.

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

4. Review — do not trust the self-report

Treat Vibe'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 --prompt mode the relay always sets the agent profile explicitly:

Relay flag	What Vibe gets	Use when
(default)	--agent accept-edits	Normal implementation — built-in file edits are approved
--plan-only	--agent plan	Read-only review, exploration, or planning
--full-access	--agent auto-approve	Explicitly authorized runs that need arbitrary shell/tools

Default mode lets Vibe edit files inside the target worktree. Approval-gated shell commands, including most project gates, are denied headlessly; the orchestrator runs the gates. --full-access disables Vibe's tool approvals and permits arbitrary shell/tool execution under the user account; use it only with explicit human authorization. Always inspect touchedFiles and the diff after a run.

--trust is always passed to prevent interactive directory-trust prompts in headless runs. It is not a sandbox and does not grant tool permissions.

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 Vibe'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 Vibe sessions.
• references/multi-task-queues.md — sequential queues, constraint carry-forward, progress tracking, and the final coherence pass.