Skill: squad-help

Quick reference. If you're reading this because a user said "use squad" or "squad" or "set up a squad", you're in the right place — read on for the correct invocation paths.

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Squad coordinator and squad menu skill

The Squad framework registers a custom Copilot CLI agent at .github/agents/squad.agent.md. The agent is named Squad and its description is "Your AI team. Describe what you're building, get a team of specialists that live in your repo."

Copilot CLI agents and skills are different things:

Thing	How to invoke	Example
Menu skill	Host skill tool, natural-language match, or exposed skill command	skill(squad) when available
Agent	task tool with agent_type=<name>	task(name="...", agent_type="Squad", prompt="...")
Slash command	Host-dependent built-in command or exposed user-invocable skill	/squad when the host exposes the installed menu

The Squad agent performs coordination; the separate squad menu skill lives at .github/skills/squad/SKILL.md and declares user-invocable: true. They are not interchangeable. Slash-command availability is host-dependent: use /squad only where the host exposes that skill as a command. Otherwise use its natural-language triggers or the host's skill picker/tool, when available; invoke the coordinator agent for actual orchestration.

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How to actually use Squad

Pick the path that matches the user's intent:

A) Invoke the Squad coordinator agent (most common)

The Squad coordinator orchestrates a team of specialists. It routes work to the right agent, scaffolds a team if none exists, and enforces handoffs.

task(
  name="<short-task-name>",
  agent_type="Squad",
  prompt="<what you want the team to do>"
)

Use this when the user says things like:

• "Use Squad to build X"
• "Set up an AI team for this project"
• "Have the Squad coordinator design Y"
• "Spawn Squad" / "Squad, help me with ..."

B) See what Squad commands exist

The squad skill is a categorized catalog of common Squad operations. The coordinator presents it as an interactive menu.

Trigger by natural-language match: "squad commands", "what can squad do", "show me squad options", "slash commands", "what commands are available".

Use this when the user says things like:

• "What can Squad do?"
• "Show me the squad commands"
• "squad help"

C) Initialize Squad in a fresh project

squad init is a shell command, not a tool call. The user runs it in their terminal in a project that has no .squad/ directory yet.

squad init

Do not try to invoke this from inside an existing Copilot session — .squad/ is already initialized if you're reading this file.

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What NOT to do

• ❌ Do not use the menu skill as a substitute for the Squad coordinator agent.
• ❌ Do not assume /squad is exposed by every host, or universally unsupported; check host discovery and use the natural-language menu fallback.
• ❌ Do not call task(agent_type="Squad", …) for tiny tasks the current agent can handle directly. Squad is for work that needs orchestration; trivial edits do not.

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How this skill was discovered

This repository installs managed help at .github/skills/squad-help/SKILL.md. Discovery in a picker, tool or command menu depends on the host's repository-skill support and settings. This narrow Waza correction is not pristine upstream text; preserve its coordinator/menu distinction and source-contract regression on upgrade.

If you removed this skill on purpose, the model will fall back to its own reasoning and may make the lookup mistakes described above.

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See also

• .github/agents/squad.agent.md — the actual Squad coordinator agent
• .github/skills/squad/SKILL.md — the separate command catalog and interactive menu