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Write your first workflowWrite promptsAdd branchesAdd a loopRun steps in parallelReuse a workflowPass context between stepsAdd gates and waits
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Connect a coding agentUse the shipped skillsCommand line
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting

Use the shipped skills

Install Orbital's two agent skills and ask coding agents to use them

Install Orbital’s two skills so your coding agent can deliver tickets through Orbital runs and design workflows with you. From a terminal, run:

Terminal window
orbital skill install

A skill is a folder of instructions an agent, such as Claude Code or Codex, loads when a task matches it. Orbital ships these two:

Skill What it is for When an agent uses it
orbital-delivery-lead Delivering tickets and epics through Orbital runs, as a delivery lead. You ask it to deliver tickets with Orbital, to start or watch runs, or to act as delivery lead.
orbital-create-workflow Designing a new Orbital workflow with you, one decision at a time. You ask it to turn a process into a workflow, or to design or change one.

Install them

Section titled “Install them”

  1. Open the skills settings.

    Open Settings > Command line and skills.

  2. Install each skill.

    Under Agent skills, choose Install next to each skill. Choose Update when a newer version ships.

Settings, Command line and skills page showing the orbital command installed and the agent skills installed.
Each skill shows whether it is installed and up to date.

Where they go

Section titled “Where they go”

Each skill is copied to ~/.agents/skills/<name> and linked from ~/.claude/skills/<name>. Claude Code finds it through the link. Other agents that read skills from ~/.agents/skills find the copy. The skills work for every project on your machine.

When a different copy is there

Section titled “When a different copy is there”

Orbital never overwrites a copy you changed. When the installed copy, or the link, differs from the skill Orbital ships, Orbital keeps it and says so. In Settings the skill reads “A different copy with this name is installed. Orbital will keep it unless you replace it.”

To replace it, choose Replace… in Settings and confirm, or run:

Terminal window
orbital skill install --replace orbital-delivery-lead

Orbital moves your copy to a dated backup under ~/.agents/skill-backups or ~/.claude/skill-backups, then installs its own.

orbital-delivery-lead

Section titled “orbital-delivery-lead”

The delivery lead refines tickets until they are true and worth building, and starts Orbital runs on them. It checks in on the runs, unsticks them without losing work, and verifies and closes what they deliver. It uses Orbital’s MCP tools, and gh and git. Lead delivery with a supervisor describes the loop it follows. The skill adds rules of its own for keeping delivery safe.

It needs Orbital’s MCP endpoint connected to the agent. See Connect a coding agent. Without MCP, it falls back to Orbital’s HTTP API.

Ask it, for example:

Use the orbital-delivery-lead skill to deliver the open sub-issues of
https://github.com/acme/shop/issues/400 with Orbital, one run per ticket.
Refine each ticket against main first. Check in every 30 minutes.

It comes with goal templates for one ticket and for several tickets in order. Each template carries the rules a run’s validate step needs: commit every round, check every “done when” item, and a blocker is never a pass.

orbital-create-workflow

Section titled “orbital-create-workflow”

The workflow designer turns a process you run by hand into an Orbital workflow. It interviews you one decision at a time, with a recommendation for each. It covers the goal and inputs, the unit of work, whether the workflow ends or runs on, and what each step may do. It also covers parallel work, failures and retries, and waits.

It draws the workflow as it grows and asks you to confirm the design. It asks you to approve each prompt before it writes it. Then it writes the files and validates them without running them.

It carries the complete workflow format and worked examples, so it needs nothing else.

Ask it, for example:

Use the orbital-create-workflow skill. Every Monday I read our open
support tickets, group them by product area and write a summary for the
team. Turn that into an Orbital workflow.

Check the result yourself before you run it. For a workflow saved in your library as <name>.dot:

Terminal window
orbital validate ~/.orbital/workflows/<name>.dot

Save the finished workflow in a repository’s .orbital/ folder or in your library, ~/.orbital/workflows/. It then appears in the new-run menu. Workflows explains where Orbital looks.

Section titled “Related”