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

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.)

bashCopy code
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

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:

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.