CLIO Coder

Built-in and custom agents

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On this pageSee the agents Shipped agents Add your own What validation rejects Related tutorials and research

Built-in and custom agents

See the agents you can dispatch and add your own.

See the agents

CLIO Coder dispatches focused agents from Markdown recipes. Each recipe declares the agent's tools, budget, and the result it must return.

Shell

clio-coder agents
clio-coder agents validate
clio-coder run --agent coder "<task>"

clio-coder agents lists the agents you can run, including architect, coder, debugger, documenter, git-master, tester, and verifier. /run dispatches one from a session. Add --read-only to deny writes, commands, and delegation for one dispatch.

Helper agents such as Scout are dispatched by the main agent, and clio-coder agents --all lists them. You cannot start them directly.

Shipped agents

Agent Use it to Edits files
architect Design a change or cut a plan into a sprint Plan file only
coder Make a bounded change, repair, or refactor Yes
debugger Diagnose failing code, tests, or runs No
documenter Write docs and examples from source Yes
git-master Commits, worktrees, merges, pull requests Yes
tester Add deterministic regression tests Yes
verifier Run test, lint, build, and review gates No
wiki-writer Plan a wiki or write one page Yes
wiki-repair Fix one wiki draft's diagnostics Yes

Add your own

Put a recipe at .clio-coder/agents/<id>.md for one project, or in the agents folder of your CLIO Coder config directory for yourself. The file name is the agent's id, and when a user recipe and a project recipe share an id, the project one wins. Run clio-coder agents validate after an edit.

A recipe must declare every required key, and audience must be custom:

---
version: 1
name: My Agent
description: Focused local review helper.
tools:
  required: [read, artifact]
  optional: [grep, find, ls, git]
skills: []
audience: custom
category: quality
capabilityClass: artifact-write
latencyClass: balanced
projectContextTier: bounded
budget: {toolCalls: 20, readReserve: 4, synthesis: true}
resultContract: {kind: artifact-report}
tags: [review]
---

You are My Agent. Inspect only the requested area. Never edit files.

The body is the agent's instructions. Model and target are chosen at dispatch, not in the recipe. Start it with clio-coder run --agent my-agent "Review the parser change.". A user recipe may replace a shipped agent such as coder; a project recipe cannot.

What validation rejects

clio-coder agents validate checks project and user recipes and skills, and the fleet bindings in .clio-coder/settings.local.yaml. It prints each problem as a file: field: message line and exits 1 when there is any. It rejects an unknown or missing key, an audience other than custom, a budget whose readReserve is not below toolCalls, a skill that does not resolve, and tools that break the capabilityClass, such as a verification agent that uses bash. A rejected recipe is not loaded.