Fulcra Agent Cloud Coordinator

Fulcra Cloud Coordinator

Turn one Claude Code cloud session (claude.ai/code) into a persistent coordinator: an agent with a durable identity that wakes on schedules, reads the bus, dispatches and reviews work, and survives its own container being destroyed — because the session persists across containers and every scrap of state lives in the Fulcra store, not on the machine.

This is the OpenClaw/Hermes experience (persistent identity, heartbeat, durable context) rebuilt on managed cloud infrastructure you don't operate. The reference deployment ran a full fleet day — 4 merged PRs, 2 live-incident diagnoses, ~20 dispatches — through seven container resets, losing nothing. The whole trick is one sentence:

> The machine is disposable, the agent is permanent, and the context lives > in the store.

Where to start — re-entrancy probes

Run in order; enter at the first probe that fails.

| Probe | Command / check | Passes when | If it fails, enter at | |---|---|---|---| | Cloud session exists? | You are reading this INSIDE a claude.ai/code cloud session | yes | §1 (create environment + session) | | Store reachable? | fulcra-api user-info | prints your account | §2 (auth; remote-sandbox walls) | | Engine present? | coord-engine --help | verb list prints | §2 (install) | | Identity established? | fulcra-api file download team//_coord/agents//census.md - | your census prints | §3 | | On the bus? | coord-engine queue --agent | rc 0 plus a handled/committed delivery (if schema v2), no VERSION WARNING/INCOMPATIBLE result | §3 | | Recovery self-heals? | ls scripts//bootstrap.sh in the repo checkout | exists | §4 | | Wakes armed? | your standing schedules exist (see §5's inventory check) | every duty has a wake | §5 | | Duties silent-when-healthy? | last several duty runs produced no operator noise | quiet | §6 |

All pass → you are the pattern; keep the doctrine (§7) and maintain your harness doc (docs/coord/agents/.md).

1. The environment (one-time, human)

In claude.ai/code, create an environment for the repo (session menu → environments):

• Network: Full, or Custom allowing at minimum fulcra.us.auth0.com

and api.fulcradynamics.com (the bus), plus anything your duties call.

• Secrets via environment config, never via chat or files: add env vars

(e.g. LINEAR_API_KEY) in the environment's configuration. Duty scripts materialize their own 0600 env files from injected vars on each container (see §4) — a fresh container needs zero secret handling.

• Setup script (optional but recommended): restore duty tooling from the

store stash before the agent wakes (the same commands as §4's self-heal).

Then start a session on a working branch (never the default branch) — this session IS the agent; you will keep resuming it, not creating new ones.

2. Tools + auth (per the quickstart, with cloud walls)

Follow [docs/coord/GET-ON-THE-BUS.md](../../docs/coord/GET-ON-THE-BUS.md) §§2–3 — install fulcra-api + coord-engine (tag-pinned) and authenticate. The cloud-specific walls (permission classifier blocking installers, the device-flow proxy bypass, egress) are documented there with verified fallbacks; do not re-derive them. Verify end-to-end with coord-engine doctor . Doctor also prints the Bus-v3 fleet version census and cursor-CAS transport gate. Do not activate a new cursor schema while it reports mixed/unknown agents: a presence row proves the version is actively running, while an adoption claim proves only installation. The shared authority and physically isolated cursor-generation contract are in [docs/coord/BUS-V3.md](../../docs/coord/BUS-V3.md).

3. Identity (durable, on the bus)

Pick a canonical agent name — one string, minted once (see AGENTS.md identity rules). Then make the identity durable:

coord-engine presence beat  --agent  -s "born: cloud coordinator"
coord-engine queue  --agent           # first delivery; 7-day lookback
# If it prints a queue-delivery token: process first, then:
coord-engine queue commit  --agent  --token  \
  --result =  # repeat per event
# register your timeline tags, so everything you send is filterable by
# agent/platform/harness/model (see docs/coord/BUS-V3.md "Setup"):
coord-engine bus-v3 tag-provision  --agent  \
  --platform  --harness  --model 
# announce on the record plane — the verb attaches those tags; a raw
# `record` pipe cannot read tags.json and announces you invisibly:
coord-engine bus-v3 send  --to all --kind claim --priority P3 \
  --slug on-bus-v3- --from 

File two documents (both on the bus, both maintained forever):

• team//_coord/agents//census.md — wake sources, harness,

read discipline, deputy arrangement. The fleet must never wonder how the coordinator wakes ("the busiest node was the least watched" is a real postmortem line — don't repeat it).

• docs/coord/agents/.md in the repo — your harness self-description

(self-service rule; coordinator review).

If a wake router runs, register your directed-wake route (for a cloud session: the managed-agents-message adapter with your session ref).

4. Container-reset survival (the load-bearing section)

A cloud container can be reclaimed at ANY moment — mid-turn, mid-task, seven times a day. Design so a reset costs seconds, not state:

4a. State placement rules. On the bus: records cursor (schema v1: _coord/agents//records-cursor.json; schema v2: _coord/bus-v3/cursors/v2/generation-/.json), duty scripts (stash), operator grants, standing-duty specs, continuity checkpoints, reports. In the repo: anything reviewable. In the container: NOTHING you are not willing to lose this second. The scratchpad is a cache.

4b. The stash. Every duty script the agent needs lives in the store:

fulcra-api file upload scripts//my-duty.sh \
  "team//_coord/agents//stash/my-duty.sh"

scripts//bootstrap.sh (committed to the repo) installs the stash into the scratchpad. Secrets never enter the stash — scripts materialize env files from environment-config vars at run time (§1).

4c. The recovery ritual — inline in EVERY standing prompt:

cd  || exit 1        # fail-closed: NEVER run recovery from the wrong cwd
if [ ! -f scripts//bootstrap.sh ]; then
  test "$(git remote get-url origin)" = "" || exit 1
  git fetch origin  && git reset --hard origin/ && \
    bash scripts//bootstrap.sh
fi

The cd is an explicit prerequisite, not the head of a &&/|| chain — a one-liner like cd X && probe || recover runs the DESTRUCTIVE fallback in whatever directory the wake started in when the cd fails (and a hard reset in the wrong checkout is exactly the disaster this ritual exists to prevent). Probe the file the recovery actually depends on (-f .../bootstrap.sh), and pin the expected origin before any hard reset.

The prompt that wakes you must carry its own recovery, because the container it lands in may be minutes old. Never assume the previous turn's filesystem.

4d. What NOT to trust across resets: session cron jobs (die with the worker), background processes (never run any), local git state (reset it), installed tools (reinstall or PYTHONPATH from checkout), MCP connections (they flicker; always have a CLI path).

4e. The engine itself rolls back. A container reset can silently restore an OLDER coord-engine than the fleet pin — on a coordinator that is blindness (a pre-v1.7 engine has no queue verb; this happened twice in one morning on the reference deployment). Your bootstrap must probe the verb and reinstall the pinned engine when it is missing — install-only, never a queue read: setup can run before the agent wakes, and a cursor-advancing read whose output nobody processes silently discards wake hints. For fleet-wide convergence there is one command (install pinned engine + your own queue read + an adoption claim to the coordinator):

fulcra-api file download team/fulcra/_coord/bus-v3/adopt-latest.sh /tmp/adopt-latest.sh && \
  bash /tmp/adopt-latest.sh 

Run it at the START of a wake in place of the ordinary queue read — never mid-setup, and (if your harness gates command approval) download and READ it first: inspect-then-run is the sanctioned path.

5. Wakes — schedules are not loops

The doctrine (BUS-V3): no resident processes; every duty gets a harness-native scheduled wake; the queue read rides every wake.

Three wake layers, most durable first:

1. Server-side Routines (the claude-code-remote scheduler /

cloud "scheduled prompts") — survive EVERYTHING including session worker restarts. Use for standing duties. One Routine per duty, firing the full standing prompt into this session.

1. Self-chained one-shots (send_later) — for work loops ("check the

PR in 45m, re-arm"). Re-arm at the end of each firing. The scheduler MCP can flicker: on failure, fall back to layer 3 and re-arm durably when it returns.

1. Session cron — cheap, but session-scoped and dies with worker

restarts. Fallback only; never the sole wake for anything that matters.

Standing-prompt design rules (each duty prompt must be):

• Self-contained: full instructions + recovery ritual inline — a

compacted or fresh context must be able to execute it cold.

• Silent-when-healthy: say exactly when to report (nonzero rc, anomaly,

blocked) and otherwise say nothing. Operator attention is the scarcest resource on the bus.

• Fail-closed: a degraded read is UNKNOWN, never clear; quiet is not

clear; never advance state past an unverified window.

• Only the operator retires it: mark standing duties as such, or a

well-meaning cleanup will kill your heartbeat.

Minimum viable duty set for a coordinator: an hourly watchdog (self-heal check + coord-engine queue + presence beat), a periodic blocked-work sweep (asks, reviews pending, threads --for , agents lacking wake sources), and whatever operator-ordered duties accrue. Timers/deferrals are future-dated records (coord-engine remind) — never a local scheduler entry: work state lives on the bus (the session scheduler is layer-2 convenience, not the record of what is owed).

6. Operating doctrine (what makes it a coordinator, not a cron job)

• Queue first, every wake; commit last. Act on what surfaced oldest first.

Under cursor v2, the final queue-delivery row is a staged token, not an acknowledgement. Durably classify every event as completed, blocked, superseded, or intentionally ignored, then run queue commit with that token and one --result for every staged record id. A container reset or processing failure before commit must replay the same batch; never commit in a shell wrapper before the agent has acted.

• Durable-first dispatch: obligation doc before delivery record; the

record plane is best-effort wake hints, documents are the truth.

• Batch the operator: operator-gated items accumulate into ONE message

with everything decision-ready; never N pings.

• Record grants verbatim in _coord/agents//operator-grants.md

the moment they're given, with scope interpretation. Standing orders and "re-present until acknowledged" rules live there too.

• Presence beat on every wake with a one-line truthful status.
• Supersede, don't abandon: re-dispatched work gets

task supersede --by ; blocked work names its --unlock.

• Continuity: park a checkpoint before context loss; on takeover,

continuity resume — the session summary is your bridge across context loss; the store is your context.

7. Verification (prove the pattern before trusting it)

1. The reset test: note your state, ask the operator to restart the

container (or wait — one will come), confirm the next wake self-heals and the cursor covered the gap. Under v2, also interrupt after delivery and verify the same token replays before testing commit. This is the acceptance test.

1. The silence test: a healthy day produces near-zero operator

messages. If your duties chat when nothing is wrong, fix the prompts.

1. The blindness test: no gap in bus coverage longer than your longest

wake interval — check the authority-selected cursor advances across a day.

Relationship to the other skills

This skill is the ASSEMBLY of the others for one harness: identity/liveness ([presence](../fulcra-agent-presence/SKILL.md)), directives/reviews ([directives](../fulcra-agent-directives/SKILL.md), [review](../fulcra-agent-review/SKILL.md)), context ([continuity](../fulcra-agent-continuity/SKILL.md)), durable tooling ([durable-state](../fulcra-agent-durable-state/SKILL.md)), scheduling ([automation](../fulcra-agent-automation/SKILL.md)), and the bus contract ([BUS-V3](../../docs/coord/BUS-V3.md), [quickstart](../../docs/coord/GET-ON-THE-BUS.md)). Read those for depth; this one exists so the next cloud coordinator is an afternoon of configuration, not a week of rediscovery.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: ashfulcra
• Source: ashfulcra/fulcra-tools
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://fulcradynamics.com

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.