A multi-agent orchestration skill that coordinates parallel Claude Code agents using mechanisms from ant colonies, honeybee swarms, and AI research.
/hive <task> breaks your task into subtasks, spawns agents in parallel waves, coordinates them through shared findings, resolves conflicts, and learns from each run.
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
/hive |
Parallel swarm orchestration for execution tasks: research, fixes, refactors, audits. |
/hiverev |
Persona-driven review of any artifact from any angle: a UI, a landing page, a cold email, a README, a pitch deck, a flow. Pick who is looking and what lens they bring, get a prioritized friction punch list. Runs in-context, no sub-agents. |
/hivesim |
Strategic wargame engine. 7 phases: scout, decompose, quantitative buyer sim (10-15 personas), deep buying journeys, 3-adversary red team with FATAL verification, pre-mortem, and a one-page Go/No-Go Decision Brief with kill criteria. |
- Concurrency unlocked: Old limit was 2 heavy agents (from a March 2026 incident). Stress-tested to 25 read / 20 write / 15 mixed agents with zero failures across 161 launches. Default start concurrency raised from 5 to 10.
- Mechanism audit: Honest assessment of all 27 mechanisms. 10 fire regularly, 17 are theoretical/broken. Dead mechanisms documented, not removed (platform may support them in future).
- Cross-skill sync: Updated concurrency limits across /hivesim, /sim, /gtm, /hivefront. All skills now use proven ceilings.
- Hivesim personas: Now spawn 10-15 personas per wave instead of 2. ~4x faster wall clock time for strategic analysis.
| Scenario | Agents | Wall Time | Speedup vs Sequential |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-file audit | 10 haiku | ~60s | 8x |
| 15-fix code wave | 2 opus + 4 sonnet + 9 haiku | ~200s | 4.4x |
| 109-file catalog | 5 waves x 25 haiku | ~3 min | 18x |
| 20-file write batch | 20 haiku | ~73s | 10x |
| Config | Agents | Result | Avg Latency |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 haiku | 5 | PASS | 5.4s |
| 10 haiku | 10 | PASS | 9.2s |
| 4 sonnet | 4 | PASS | 9.7s |
| 2 opus | 2 | PASS | 11.9s |
| 10h + 3s | 13 | PASS | h:7.6s / s:12.9s |
| 8h + 1o | 9 | PASS | h:5.5s / o:10.5s |
| 5h + 2s + 1o | 8 | PASS | h:4.9s / s:7.1s / o:10.7s |
Key findings:
- No hard 529 wall found up to 13 mixed agents
- Model tiers don't conflict (haiku/sonnet/opus share the same pool)
- 10+ agents get queued ~2 min before executing (Claude Code internal queue)
- 529 errors are transient API load spikes. Always retry with 30s delay.
- Safe default: 13 mixed agents. Flat count, not weighted.
In Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add CipherandRow/claude-hive-plugin
/plugin install hive@cipherandrow
Or manually copy any skill folder from skills/ into your ~/.claude/skills/ directory.
/hive research the top 5 competitors and compare pricing
/hive fix all failing tests in src/
/hive --dry-run refactor the auth module
/hive --resume
/hive --isolate update all API endpoints to v2
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
--resume |
Resume from last checkpoint |
--isolate |
Force git worktree isolation for all agents |
--dry-run |
Show execution plan without launching agents |
--verbose |
Show mechanism trace after each wave (default: on) |
--quiet |
Suppress execution trace |
- Mode Detection: Counts subtasks, selects Lite/Standard/Full mode
- Strategy Selection: Reads past run history, picks best strategy
- Planning: Breaks task into waves with dependency ordering and reserve pool
- Pre-flight: Context ceiling check, confidence calibration, agent TTL calculation
- Execution: Spawns agents in waves with stigmergy (shared findings board), velocity scaling, and error handling
- Synthesis: Merges results using decision protocols (vote, consensus, or AAD)
- Learning: Appends scored results to history, updates playbook with time-decay
| # | Mechanism | Origin | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Self-Validation Gates | Leaf-cutter ants | Agents validate own output before returning |
| 3 | Reasoning Tree Conflicts | AgentAuditor | Find exact divergence point in reasoning |
| 4 | Stigmergy | Ants | Shared findings for indirect coordination |
| 6 | Semantic Quorum | Honeybees + LLM | Early commitment via semantic similarity |
| 7 | Scout Retirement (TTL) | Honeybees | Kill stuck agents proactively |
| 11 | Cross-Inhibition | Honeybee stop signals | Competing proposals dampen each other |
| 13 | Assembly Line QC | Leaf-cutter ants | Pipeline handoff quality gates |
| 15 | Adaptive Mode | Ant response thresholds | Auto-scale mechanisms to task size |
| 17 | Auto-Verify Gate | Manufacturing QC | Run tsc + tests after code-writing waves |
| 27 | Debug Trace | Distributed tracing | JSONL event log for every decision |
| # | Mechanism | Why Inactive |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pheromone Evaporation | History is read but scoring never changes agent routing |
| 5 | Completion Velocity | Concurrency is now fixed at proven tiers, not dynamically scaled |
| 8 | Decision Protocols | Vote/consensus/AAD never explicitly activates as distinct step |
| 9 | Swarm Playbook | No evidence of playbook influencing future runs |
| 10 | Ready-Up Signal | Pre-flight exists but not as a distinct mechanism |
| 12 | Inspector Agents | Never fires in production |
| 14 | Checkpoint/Resume | Defined but never used across 50 runs |
| 16 | Worktree Isolation | Broken on Windows (file delivery fails on cleanup) |
| 18-26 | Advanced mechanisms | Platform doesn't yet support (JSON schema enforcement, dynamic tool loading, hot reassignment, etc.) |
These remain in the skill definition for forward compatibility. As Claude Code and the Agent SDK evolve, more mechanisms may activate.
| Model | Avg Duration | Avg Tool Calls | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haiku | 7-29s | 1-5 | File reads, grep, single-file fixes, summaries |
| Sonnet | 85-95s | 20-25 | Multi-file fixes, code review, medium complexity |
| Opus | 94-115s | 10-12 | Complex rewrites, architecture decisions, synthesis |
Strict prompts beat loose prompts in every dimension:
- 44% faster per-agent execution
- 10x less code bloat
- 0 scope violations vs 1
Always include in write agent prompts:
ONLY EDIT THIS FILE: [path]. DO NOT edit any other file.
DO NOT add inline comments, refactor, or change code outside the task.
- Claude Code CLI
- Git (for worktree isolation, optional)
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| v4.2 | July 23, 2026 | Added /hiverev (persona-driven review of any artifact) and /hivesim (strategic wargame engine) skills |
| v4.1 | April 9, 2026 | Full concurrency test suite (78 agents, 0 errors), flat ceiling model replaces weighted tokens |
| v4.0 | April 8, 2026 | Concurrency unlocked (2->25), mechanism audit, cross-skill sync |
| v3.0 | March 25, 2026 | 14 mechanisms, semantic quorum, reasoning tree, A2A protocol |
| v2.0 | March 2026 | Adaptive mode, worktree isolation, stigmergy |
| v1.0 | March 2026 | Basic parallel agent orchestration |
MIT