What to read next

Three reading paths through the documentation: running a workshop, writing agent prompts, and wiring orch into a team.

Pick the path that matches what you came for#

I want to run my own workshop#

Read the concepts in this order — each one is short and answers one question.

  1. Workspace and project — what orch setup bound, and why a project is not the same thing.
  2. Chair and workers — who may spawn whom, and what happens when a second Chair arrives.
  3. Disk memory — where the workshop remembers things, and why chat does not count.
  4. Shared code law — locks, orch:export, and the clone gate that stops you writing a function twice.

I am writing prompts for an agent#

The agent reads the contract, not this site. Still, these two pages tell you what to ask for:

  1. Bus and ask — how a worker reaches the Chair, and how a blocking question is answered.
  2. Code graph — the four queries that answer "who calls this?" and "what does this diff break?".

The full tool-by-tool contract lives in client/docs/PROTOCOL-AGENT.md in the repository: every MCP tool, its arguments, its success shape and its failure shapes.

I am setting this up for a team#

  1. Hooks and guards — what is opt-in, what is advisory and what actually denies a write.
  2. Gateway and overlook — one local connection for provider keys, and what the SaaS side can and cannot see.

Things worth knowing early#

  • Hidden does not mean unavailable. orch --help hides the power-user and agent-protocol verbs to keep the list short. orch symbols, orch task, orch msg, orch lock, orch ask, orch guard, orch memory, orch ledger, orch session and orch mcp all work, and each answers --help.
  • Loose mode is not an error. Run orch outside a bound workspace and the shared-protocol tools return a skip message rather than failing. The gateway still works.
  • Nothing here is automatic. Guards, git hooks, IDE hooks, memory condensing and the overlook link are all things you turn on.
  • Quickstart — if you have not run the seven steps yet, start there.
  • Install — PATH, orch version, orch home.