Use when you are a seat on the oversight pod (a standing monitor-mode rig that keeps OTHER rigs healthy), configuring or running the drift detectors, or choosing whether to intervene vs escalate. Cove
Install
The skill file stays in the publisher's repository.
Paste the copied command in a terminal. It installs this SKILL.md into that agent.
npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill oversight-team -a cursor -y
Use when you are a seat on the oversight pod (a standing monitor-mode rig that keeps OTHER rigs healthy), configuring or running the drift detectors, or choosing whether to intervene vs escalate. Covers the pull-not-poll posture, the v0 detectors (premature-park, process-drift, off-task, token-burn), the intervention ladder (orchestrator-ping -> refocus -> human escalation), and the cheap+deep model economics. NOT for orchestrating your OWN rig (orchestration-team) and NOT the intervention primitive mechanics (watchdog).
Questions
How do I install oversight-team?
Download packages/daemon/specs/agents/shared/skills/pods/oversight-team/SKILL.md from the publisher, or copy the path and open the repository. PlugMCP lists the skill and does not host the file.
Where does oversight-team live?
The publisher keeps it at https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig.
Which agents can use oversight-team?
Claude, Cursor, and Codex can read a SKILL.md you add from the publisher's repository.
Use when you are a seat on the oversight pod (a standing monitor-mode rig that keeps OTHER rigs healthy), configuring or running the drift detectors, or choosing whether to intervene vs escalate. Covers the pull-not-poll posture, the v0 detectors (premature-park, process-drift, off-task, token-burn), the intervention ladder (orchestrator-ping -> refocus -> human escalation), and the cheap+deep model economics. NOT for orchestrating your OWN rig (orchestration-team) and NOT the intervention primitive mechanics (watchdog).
name: oversight-team
description: Use when you are a seat on the oversight pod (a standing monitor-mode rig that keeps OTHER rigs healthy), configuring or running the drift detectors, or choosing whether to intervene vs escalate. Covers the pull-not-poll posture, the v0 detectors (premature-park, process-drift, off-task, token-burn), the intervention ladder (orchestrator-ping -> refocus -> human escalation), and the cheap+deep model economics. NOT for orchestrating your OWN rig (orchestration-team) and NOT the intervention primitive mechanics (watchdog).
metadata:
openrig:
stage: draft
sibling_skills:
- watchdog
- refocus
- orchestration-team
- human-in-the-loop
- messaging-the-human
- retiring-and-inheriting-a-seat
Oversight Team
You are on the oversight pod — a standing rig (agent-managed infrastructure, like the
skills-architect pattern: agents + scripts + an SOP owning a function full-time) whose job is
to keep other rigs healthy. You catch the unproductive patterns rigs drift into —
premature parking, process-drift, off-task wandering, token burn — early, and correct them
with the lightest touch that works. Monitor mode: idle until a flag fires; never hyper-poll.
Use this when
You are a seat running in monitor mode on the oversight pod.
Configuring or running the v0 drift detectors over the fleet.
Deciding whether to intervene (orchestrator-ping / refocus) or escalate (human).
Don't use this when
You are orchestrating your own rig — that's orchestration-team. Oversight watches
across rigs; it does not run them.
You need the intervention primitive mechanics (the wake / refocus / alignment-checkpoint
stack, rig watchdog policies, message shape) — that's watchdog.
A single stuck seat needs recovery — the owning orchestrator or watchdog handles that.
The posture — pull, never poll (load-bearing, and self-referential)
Monitor mode means idle until a flag fires, then wake and check — not continuous watching.
Continuous rig capture / vigilant-observation loops are the exact anti-pattern that has
burned entire model accounts: an over-observing watcher is expensive and produces nothing.
The oversight seat must model the discipline it enforces — the token-burn detector below
exists precisely because seats fell into vigilant loops, so a hyper-polling monitor would be
the failure it hunts. Cheap models read the large swaths; the expensive watcher acts on
aggregated summaries, never the raw firehose.
The v0 detectors (scripted + cheap-model-summarized)
Cheap, evidence-based checks — each confirms a pattern from durable evidence before anyone acts:
Premature park — an in-progress qitem with an idle owner and no handoff. Pull the
transcript and confirm the turn actually ended without passing the ball (not merely quiet).
Process-drift — the ship-nothing pattern: commits that produce no shipped change, heavy
test iteration, very large/verbose qitems, endless deliberation. Detectable from git history
queue sizes. (This is process winning over product; correct it toward shipping.)
Off-task drift — a cheap-model summary over a large activity swath (JSONL transcripts,
the stream, git log) answering one question: "is this rig on task?" If a pod drifts too
long, intervene.
Token burn / hypermonitoring — a seat consuming unusually — top-N consumers → capture and
inspect for the vigilant-loop pattern. Telemetry surface caveat: the v0 detector uses
point-in-time consumption polling; per-agent token telemetry OVER TIME is a later
upgrade — do NOT assume it exists, and verify the available telemetry against your current
version before wiring a detector to it.
Interventions — least-disruptive first
Orchestrator-ping — nudge the pod's own orchestrator to realign. They run their rig; you
prompt, you do not seize.
The refocus primitive — watchdog's Refocus level: a reactive north-star reminder
that fires only on actual drift, re-centers role / approved workstream / stop conditions,
and does NOT interrupt valid work or turn into a fresh approval gate. Use watchdog for the
message shape and the cadence discipline.
Escalate to the human — via the existing human path / notifications, per the active mode.
Reserve for what an agent-level nudge cannot fix.
Do not (the discipline)
Don't hyper-poll / vigilant-loop — you become the token burn you hunt.
Don't seize another rig's work — ping its orchestrator; oversight corrects patterns, it
does not take over.
Don't fire refocus on an active, on-task owner — that's bureaucracy theater (a watchdog
failure mode).
Don't intervene on a glance — confirm the pattern from evidence (transcript / git / queue)
before acting. A false alarm costs the fleet trust and tokens.
Don't fire liveness / premature-park flags on a seat in an announced SWAP WINDOW. A seat mid-handover
looks idle/parked to the detectors. The executing party pre-announces (seat + expected window) at swap
start — honor it as a suppression window until the handover receipt lands (receipts arrive only at
swap end, so waiting on the receipt alone still misfires on a long swap). See retiring-and-inheriting-a-seat.
Cheap + deep model economics
Cheap models do the routine reading (transcripts, logs, stream) and aggregate intelligent
summaries; an expensive watcher decides on those summaries. This is why per-agent model
assignment matters — you can run the reading far more often without blowing out accounts. Design
the pod so the deep model never touches the raw firehose.
See also
watchdog — the intervention primitive (wake / refocus / alignment-checkpoint) this SOP
drives; refocus lives there.
refocus — the drift doctrine watchdog operationalizes.
orchestration-team — running your own rig (complementary; oversight watches across rigs).
human-in-the-loop / messaging-the-human — the escalation path and how to address a human.
retiring-and-inheriting-a-seat — a context-threshold detector can fire a planned seat
handover (sibling oversight signal).
How do I install oversight-team?
Download packages/daemon/specs/agents/shared/skills/pods/oversight-team/SKILL.md from the publisher, or copy the path and open the repository. PlugMCP lists the skill and does not host the file.
Where does oversight-team live?
The publisher keeps it at https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig.
Which agents can use oversight-team?
Claude, Cursor, and Codex can read a SKILL.md you add from the publisher's repository.