Skiff
Menu

Set up Admiral, Skippers and task types

Admiral is the Skiff agent: one agent session in a folder of its own. It sends tasks to sessions in your projects, follows them, and reports back. A project or a fleet can have a Skipper of its own. This chapter sets them up before the first start.

Chapter 1 of 9 · Skiff user guide

Open Settings

  1. Click the gear at the right of the top bar, or press Ctrl+Shift+,.
  2. Click a section in the list on the left. Ctrl+Shift+Up and Ctrl+Shift+Down step through the sections.
  3. Press Esc to close Settings.

Every setting goes to one file, projects.toml. Its path shows under the Settings title.

Set Admiral

  1. Open Settings › Skippers.
  2. Folder shows where Admiral works. The default is skiff-agent in your home folder. To use another folder, click Change…. Skiff shows what the change does before it does it.
  3. Main is Admiral's name. Leave it empty to keep Admiral, or type another name. The name shows on the row at the top of the side panel.
  4. Agent picks the agent Admiral runs, from the agents that are on in Settings › Agents. The field beside it takes a model name. Leave it empty for the agent's default. A change applies at the next start.
  5. Continue on restore shows the line the agent gets after a restart of skiffd. Turn the switch on to continue the last conversation. Turn it off to start a new one.
Skiff Settings, Skippers. Rows: Folder with Copy path, Show in file manager and Change; Main with the placeholder Admiral; Project/Fleet with the placeholder Skipper; Agent set to claude with the model claude-opus-5-5; Continue on restore, on. Under it, the Project and fleet Skippers agent row reads Same as Admiral, and an Instructions table lists AGENTS.md and a SKIPPER.md for the platform fleet and the projects devbox, atlas and harbor, each with a status and an Edit button.
Settings › Skippers: Admiral's folder, name, agent and model, the project and fleet Skippers' agent, and the instruction files.

Set the Skippers

A project Skipper runs in one project. A fleet Skipper runs in every project of a fleet. Both take their name and agent from the same page.

  1. In Settings › Skippers, Project/Fleet is the word every project and fleet Skipper uses. The default is Skipper. A project session is named atlas Skipper, a fleet session platform Skipper.
  2. Under PROJECT AND FLEET SKIPPERS, Agent picks the agent and model they run. Same as Admiral takes Admiral's.
  3. Under INSTRUCTIONS, each row is one file. AGENTS.md is the base every Skipper reads. Each fleet and each open project has a SKIPPER.md with its own section.
  4. Click Edit to open a file in the app you set for text files. If the file does not exist yet, Skiff writes it from its template first.
  5. The STATUS column reads none, template or edited. template changed means Skiff has a newer template than your edited copy. Reset… writes the template again and keeps your file as a backup.

A setting change never starts or stops a Skipper. A running Skipper reads its files at its next start.

Set task types

A task type names the agent and the model Admiral starts for one kind of task, and a file of instructions for it. Admiral picks the type. Skiff reads no task text.

  1. Open Settings › Task types.
  2. In the last row, type a name in New task type: lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, such as code-review.
  3. Pick the AGENT. Type a MODEL, or leave it empty for the agent's default. An agent that takes its model in its command shows set by agent.
  4. Click Add task type.
  5. To give the type instructions, click Edit in its row. Skiff makes the file in the types folder and opens it. The INSTRUCTIONS cell shows the file's size, or none.
  6. To change a row, click a cell and type. To remove a type, click − at its right. The instruction file stays.
Skiff Settings, Task types. A table with the columns TYPE, AGENT, MODEL and INSTRUCTIONS lists coding and design on claude with claude-opus-5-5, copy-editing on claude with claude-sonnet-5-5, code-review on codex with gpt-6.1-sol, web-research on gemini and x-research on grok. Each row has an Edit button and a remove button. The last row is New task type with an Add task type button.
Settings › Task types. Each row is one kind of task with its agent, model and instruction file.

Some agents cannot take an instruction file. Gemini and Hermes are two of them. Keep their types without instructions.