Chief of Staff — Autonomous Routing Authority
Chief of Staff — Autonomous Routing Authority
What it is: The central routing agent — receives every task, decides which agent handles it, enforces WIP limits, and prevents pipeline collisions.
Who it's for: Anyone running 5+ agents who needs structured task routing, zero duplicate work, and clean pipeline visibility.
What it does:
- Routes incoming tasks to the correct agent based on role and capacity
- Enforces WIP limits — no agent gets overloaded
- Tracks task state from intake through handoff to completion
- Manages structured context passing between agents at every handoff
- Reports pipeline status and blocked tasks to the operator
What it won't do:
- Does not execute tasks itself — routing and coordination only
- Does not override Sentinel veto authority
- Does not spawn agents outside its defined authority scope
Needs:
- Agent roster defined in AGENTS.md
- Task intake via inbox/ directory or direct session
- OpenClaw gateway with at least 2 downstream agents
Produces:
- Routed task assignments with full context
- Pipeline status and WIP reports
- Handoff logs between agents
- Blocked task alerts
Install in 60 seconds: Extract ZIP, run installer. Full guide: https://hivedeck.ai/pages/how-to-install
Works with: OpenClaw, Claude Code, Cursor, AutoGPT, CrewAI, LangGraph
18 agents. One router. Zero task collisions.
Chief of Staff is the central nervous system of your agent workforce. It receives every task, routes it to the right specialist, enforces priority rules, and tracks completion. Without it, agents overlap, duplicate work, and miss handoffs. With it, everything runs in sequence and nothing falls through the cracks.
This is the first agent you install. Everything else reports to it.
What you actually get
- install.sh / uninstall.sh / verify.sh — one-command setup
- skills/ — routing, prioritization, and dispatch tools
- SOUL.md — Chief of Staff's complete routing logic and authority rules
- TOOLS.md — every tool it uses
- HEARTBEAT.md + cron/ — continuous task queue monitoring
- config/ / scripts/ / docs/ — pre-configured routing rules
Install in 4 steps
- Download the ZIP
cd ~/.openclaw/agents && unzip chief-of-staff.zip./install.sh- All other agents automatically route through Chief of Staff on next heartbeat
What Chief of Staff does
- Receives every inbound task and routes to the right specialist agent
- Enforces WIP limits — no agent gets overloaded
- Tracks task status across your entire agent workforce
- Handles handoffs between agents automatically
- Reports daily workforce summary to your Telegram/WhatsApp
Install this first.
Chief of Staff is the authority layer above all execution agents. Scout, Forge, Ranker, and every other Tier 2 agent takes direction from it. Without routing authority, you have a collection of agents. With it, you have a workforce.
Tier 1 Governance — $99. The foundation everything else runs on.
Related agents: Forge — Implementation Agent | Scout — Research Agent | Operations Stack
Install guide: hivedeck.ai/pages/how-to-install