coral-built-in-agent-setup

Coral Built-in Agent Setup

This skill installs built-in agents into ~/.coral/ and registers them in the Coral server config.

The bundled agent templates are in ${SKILL_DIR}/agents/ (claude-code, hermes, puppet).

Step 0: Check if coral-server is installed

First, verify that coral-server exists:

test -f ~/.coral/coral-server/gradlew && echo "CORAL_SERVER_OK" || echo "CORAL_SERVER_NOT_FOUND"

• If "CORAL_SERVER_OK" → proceed to Step 1.
• If "CORAL_SERVER_NOT_FOUND" → tell the user that coral-server must be installed first, then read and follow the sibling skill coral-setup/SKILL.md to set it up. After coral-server setup completes, come back here and continue from Step 1.

Step 1: Ask the user which agents to install

Tell the user:

Coral server is ready. Would you like to install built-in agents? Available agents:

• Claude Code — an AI coding agent powered by Anthropic's Claude
• Hermes — a general-purpose AI agent by Nous Research

(The Puppet test agent will be installed automatically.)

Wait for the user's response before proceeding.

Step 2: Check prerequisites

For each agent the user selected, check if the required CLI tool is installed:

echo "=== CLAUDE CODE ===" && (claude --version 2>&1 || echo "NOT_INSTALLED") && echo "=== HERMES ===" && (hermes --version 2>&1 || echo "NOT_INSTALLED")

Parse the output:

• If Claude Code shows "NOT_INSTALLED", tell the user to install it first: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview
• If Hermes shows "NOT_INSTALLED", tell the user to install it first: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/getting-started/installation

If any selected agent is missing its CLI, stop and wait for the user to install it, then re-check. Do NOT proceed until all selected agents have their CLIs available.

Puppet has no prerequisites — it only uses curl and bash.

Step 3: Deploy agents to ~/.coral/

For each agent to install (user-selected ones + puppet which is always installed), copy from the skill's bundled templates:

# Always install puppet
cp -r ${SKILL_DIR}/agents/puppet ~/.coral/puppet

# If user wants Claude Code
cp -r ${SKILL_DIR}/agents/claude-code ~/.coral/claude-code

# If user wants Hermes
cp -r ${SKILL_DIR}/agents/hermes ~/.coral/hermes

Make startup scripts executable:

chmod +x ~/.coral/puppet/startup.sh
chmod +x ~/.coral/claude-code/startup.sh  # if installed
chmod +x ~/.coral/hermes/startup.sh       # if installed

Step 4: Update config.toml

Read ~/.coral/coral-server/src/main/resources/config.toml and update the local_agents list under [registry] to point to the new ~/.coral/ paths.

The paths should use the user's actual home directory (expand ~). Build the list based on what was installed:

• Always include: "<HOME>/.coral/puppet"
• If Claude Code installed: "<HOME>/.coral/claude-code"
• If Hermes installed: "<HOME>/.coral/hermes"

Example result in config.toml:

[registry]
local_agents = ["/Users/username/.coral/claude-code", "/Users/username/.coral/hermes", "/Users/username/.coral/puppet"]

Use the Edit tool to update only the local_agents line. Do not modify any other part of config.toml.

Step 5: Verify and report

Confirm the setup:

echo "=== INSTALLED AGENTS ===" && ls -d ~/.coral/claude-code ~/.coral/hermes ~/.coral/puppet 2>/dev/null && echo "=== CONFIG CHECK ===" && grep "local_agents" ~/.coral/coral-server/src/main/resources/config.toml

Tell the user:

• Which agents were installed and where
• That puppet was auto-installed as a test agent
• To start the server with cd ~/.coral/coral-server && ./gradlew run if not already running
• Agents will auto-register when the server starts

Step 6: Offer to try multi-agent orchestration

After reporting the setup results, ask the user:

Would you like to try running these agents through Coral server? I can help you orchestrate a multi-agent session.

If the user says yes, read the sibling skill at ${SKILL_DIR}/../coral-agent-swarm/SKILL.md and follow its instructions to set up and run a multi-agent session.