Cooperative Co-Pilot Loop (Supervisor Protocol)

The Co-Pilot Loop splits software engineering tasks between a Supervisor (Outer Loop — you) and an Executor (Inner Loop — a lightweight companion sub-agent). The Supervisor acts as the product manager and QA director, while the Executor performs spec writing, planning, and coding inside an isolated worktree.

You do not know which CLI or chat interface the user is using — and that's fine. The skill is model-agnostic. It reads the cheapest model for the active CLI at runtime.

1. Setup & Orientation

Step 1A — Determine the active CLI backend

Ask the user once (or detect from context):

"Which CLI backend is available for the sub-agent? (agy, claude, copilot, codex, llama)"

Step 1B — Look up the cheapest model for that backend

Read plugins/agent-loops/references/cheapest_models.json (relative to the repo root where this skill is installed). Select the model field for the detected CLI: