Delegate a coding task to the Cline coding agent CLI (`cline`) as a background implementer, then review its diff and land it yourself. Use this whenever the user wants to delegate implementation work to Cline - phrasings like "have Cline implement X", "delegate this to cline", "run it through Cline"

Cline Delegate You are the orchestrator . Delegate a bounded coding task to a separate implementer the Cline coding agent CLI then review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; the implementer makes changes in its own session in a clean working tree; you verify and commit. The loop needs only a shell command and file access, so any comparable orchestrator can drive it. When NOT to use this The task is small enough to do inline; delegation overhead is not worth it. The cline CLI is not installed or authenticated. You require the relay to configure a sandbox. Cline exposes sandbox controls, but this relay leaves them to the CLI environment; use plan when the run must be read only. Prerequisites (check once) 1. Install cline (npm or bundled binary; the relay probes cline version ). 2. Authenticate: run cline auth (interactive sign in), or configure ANTHROPIC API KEY / an OpenAI compatible base URL. 3. Confirm cline version succeeds. 4. Work in, or point cd at, the target git repository. Choose the model (optional) Cline picks a default model. To choose another, pass the separate model <id or provider <name (e.g. anthropic , openai native , openrouter ). The relay accepts letters, digits, and . : / only (the value reaches a shell on Windows). The loop Run these five steps per task. Steps 1, 4, and 5 require judgment; 2 and 3 are mechanical. 1. Write a brief Cline sees only the text you send. It cannot read your conversation: the brief must stand alone with the goal, current state, what to change, what to leave untouched, the project's real gates, and a report contract. Keep each brief to a single task. Write it to a file and pass it as the relay's brief . See [references/writing the brief.md](references/writing the brief.md). 2. Dispatch Use the bundled relay. It runs cline json v , streams the brief on stdin behind a fixed positional instruction, captures the JSON event stream, and writes result.json . The child's cwd pins the workspace. The relay writes artifacts under the system temp dir by default and never commits. See [references/dispatch and poll.md](references/dispatch and poll.md). 3. Wait for completion The relay blocks until cline finishes. Run it with the orchestrator's background command facility, or background it in the shell and poll for result.json . A pre run usage error exits 2 and writes no result; a missing cline exits 127 and writes status: "cline unavailable" . Completion means the process exited and result.json exists trust process state and the working tree, not the progress display. Cline's final message is the finalMessage field of result.json . 4. Review do not trust the self report Re run the project's gates yourself. Read the diff against the brief, starting with touchedFiles . Run relevant guard skills if installed. See [references/review and land.md](references/review and land.md). 5. Land it If the work is good, commit it. The relay never commits the diff and result.json are the record; run git status and git diff first to confirm exactly what changed. If the group has a PR flow, make the commit and push a branch; let human review happen. If the diff is wrong or incomplete, re dispatch a corrected brief in a fresh run and review again. Autonomy and permissions The relay explicitly passes Cline's auto approve , defaulting to true in act mode. Cline plan mode can request a switch to act mode, so plan forces auto approve false ; the relay rejects plan auto approve true . That pair is the read only gate. Cline also exposes sandbox through data dir / CLINE SANDBOX , but the relay does not configure or override it. Plan first for anything risky, then review the plan before a separate act mode dispatch. Malformed or malicious briefs remain dangerous in act mode because commands run as the current user. Authorization model Delegation is something the human opts into. Once briefed, cline works as a tool you approved use of. The boundary is: do not accept conclusions from the self report ; verify everything on disk. For anything touching credentials, production data, or irreversible operations, stop and ask the human first instead of encoding it in a brief. References [references/writing the brief.md](references/writing the brief.md) structure, scope, gates, brief delivery. [references/dispatch and poll.md](references/dispatch and poll.md) flags, artifacts, result.json , and failure recovery. [references/review and land.md](references/review and land.md) what to verify before calling the diff done, at the end of a run. [references/multi task queues.md](references/multi task queues.md) sequential queues, constraint carry forward, progress tracking, and the final coherence pass.

cline-delegate