Orchestrators

An orchestrator is a chat you drive that works across projects. It reads their boards, sees the Claude Code sessions of its account running now, and can hand a card's work to a new session — on the board like any other. It is for the question a single project cannot answer: where does everything stand, and what should go where next.

It is still you deciding. It never moves a card into a lane that runs a step, nothing it does runs on a timer, and nothing it sends approves anything in another session. See What it never does.

Making one

Orchestrators is a group at the top of the project rail. Its +, or the New orchestrator row, asks for two things:

An orchestrator runs on Claude Code only, and an account can have several. Right-click one in the rail for Edit… (name, icon and colour), Runs as… (its next turn starts under that account; conversations so far stay with the one they began with), Reveal folder and Remove…. Removing it takes it off the rail; its folder stays on disk.

Its folder

Each orchestrator gets a folder of its own, ~/.devpit/orchestrator/<name>/, named after it in lower case. It is not a git repository.

Which account it runs as, and which projects it reaches, are kept by devpit, out of reach of its own chat.

Linking projects

An orchestrator reaches only the projects you link to it. Its right panel opens on Sessions; Boards beside it lists the linked projects with their lanes and how many cards each holds, a lane opening to its cards and a card opening on its project's board.

Link projects lists every project as a checkbox, grouped; a group's own checkbox links all of it at once. Save keeps the choice. Only linked projects show in Boards, only their folders are open to its chat, and only they are in reach of its tools. Add a project, and link it here picks a folder, names it, puts it in a group and links it, in one screen.

Proposals

Asked to — "add ~/Workspace/x to the ASC group" — it proposes a project rather than adding one. The proposal waits as a card above the composer, such as Add ~/Workspace/x as x, put it in ASC, link it here?, with Yes, Edit and Drop. Yes does it; Edit opens the name, group and link first. A project it tries to reach without a link is refused, and it is told to propose the link instead.

The chat

A new orchestrator opens on "What should we orchestrate?", with starters such as Where does every project stand? and Add a rule for every session you start:. It opens in Accept edits unless you picked another mode for that account before. In Supervised its process does not stay between turns, so a session writing back cannot wake it.

Rules for sessions

Whatever context/preferences.md keeps under a heading Rules for sessions goes with the brief of every session it starts, so a rule you would otherwise repeat in every hand-off is said once. Its first screen says where they live. Ask it to add one, or edit the file yourself.

What it never does

• It never moves a card into a lane that runs a step. Entering such a lane starts work, so it is refused and asks you to move the card. See Moving cards.
• Nothing on a timer. It acts when you write to it, or when a session it follows writes back. A reminder it sets is set off by devpit, and only tells.
• It approves nothing in another session. Answering a question, typing a reply and renaming are yours, from the window; its tools can read a session's screen and transcript, never answer for you.
• It types no control characters into a terminal, and reaches only linked projects and its own account's sessions.

What it does with sessions — handing work, hearing back, drafting replies — is in Orchestrator sessions.