Skill: delegate work to at

Use this skill when you want to hand off a coding task to another AI agent via the at CLI instead of implementing it
yourself.

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When to use at

• You have a concrete, self-contained coding task (fix, refactor, generate, review).
• You want to run the task in the background while continuing other work.
• You want automatic retry across multiple agent backends.
• You are orchestrating several parallel tasks and want each one handled by a different agent.

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Decision: which mode to use

Situation	Command form
Fire-and-forget background task	at -p "..." (default detached mode)
Need to watch output right now	at -s -p "..."
Specific agent required	at -a <name> -p "..."
Architect-level task (design, review)	at -t 1 -p "..."
Experimental / local model	at -t 3 -p "..."
Integrating with a pipeline / scripting	echo '<json>' | at --json

Default tier is 2 (dev/QA). Use tier 1 for anything that needs careful reasoning; tier 3 for boilerplate generation
or offline models.

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Step-by-step

1. Write a precise prompt

A good at prompt is self-contained: another agent reading only that string must be able to complete the task without
extra context.

Good:  "In src/auth/login.ts, add rate-limiting middleware that returns 429 after 5 failed attempts per IP within 60 s. Use the existing redis client at src/lib/redis.ts."
Bad:   "fix the auth stuff"

Include:

• What file(s) to touch
• What behaviour to implement or fix
• Any constraints (library to use, style guide, test requirement)

2. Choose a tier

at -t 1   # architect: glm-code → codex → kimi
at        # dev (default): blackbox → opencode → qwen
at -t 3   # experimental: kilo → gemini → goose → aider → pi

3. Run the command

# Detached (returns immediately, logs in /tmp/at-logs/)
at -p "add pagination to GET /api/users — page/limit query params, max 100"

# Stream (block until done)
at -s -p "write jest unit tests for src/utils/slugify.ts — cover edge cases"

# Specific agent
at -a opencode -p "refactor the payment module to use the repository pattern"

# Named model override
at -a opencode --json <<EOF
{"prompt":"rewrite the CSV parser using Papa Parse","model":"gpt-4o"}
EOF

4. Check the result

Detached mode prints the log path on startup:

[at] started opencode (pid 12345) — logs: /tmp/at-logs/at-2026-05-08T10-00-00-000Z-opencode.log

Follow the log:

tail -f /tmp/at-logs/at-2026-05-08T10-00-00-000Z-opencode.log

After the agent finishes, review the diff with git diff and run your test suite.

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JSON mode (pipeline / scripting)

Pipe a JSON object to at --json to integrate with automation:

echo '{
  "agent": "opencode",
  "prompt": "add OpenAPI annotations to all route handlers in src/routes/",
  "model": "gpt-4o",
  "cwd": "/home/user/my-project",
  "env": { "NODE_ENV": "development" }
}' | at --json

Fields: prompt (required), agent, model, cwd, env (all optional).

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Retry and failure handling

at automatically retries on non-zero exit by picking the next agent in the same tier (up to --retries, default 2).
You do not need to manually retry.

If all agents in a tier fail, at exits non-zero and prints the last error. At that point either:

• Rewrite the prompt to be clearer, or
• Switch to a different tier with -t.

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Custom / generic agents

If your environment has agents not in the built-in registry, check ~/.at/ for plugin directories. Each plugin exposes
a generic.js with tier, bin, and buildArgs. No code changes required — at discovers them automatically.

To add one:

mkdir -p ~/.at/my-agent
cat > ~/.at/my-agent/generic.js << 'EOF'
module.exports = {
  tier: 2,
  bin: () => '/usr/local/bin/my-agent',
  buildArgs: (prompt) => ['--task', prompt],
};
EOF

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Quick reference

at -p "<prompt>"                    # tier 2, detached, auto agent
at -s -p "<prompt>"                 # stream to terminal
at -t 1 -p "<prompt>"               # architect tier
at -t 3 -p "<prompt>"               # experimental tier
at -a <name> -p "<prompt>"          # named agent, no retry
at -r 0 -p "<prompt>"               # no retry
at --global-state -p "<prompt>"     # shared round-robin across tiers
at --log-dir /var/log/at -p "..."   # custom log directory
echo '<json>' | at --json           # JSON mode
at config sign                      # sign ~/.at/config.json after editing