A structural diagnostic skill used to identify and fix AI agent role misalignment, team gaps, and boundary issues before persona refinement.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install agent-sorting-hat
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install agent-sorting-hat using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Agent Sorting Hat?
Agent Sorting Hat is a foundational architectural skill for managing complex multi-agent systems. It addresses the common problem of agent role drift, where an AI assistant becomes overloaded or its responsibilities become blurred over time. By forcing a diagnostic check before persona polishing, it ensures that agents are placed in the correct functional positions within a team structure. This skill is a core part of the Openclaw Skills ecosystem for developers who need to build scalable, predictable agentic workflows.
The philosophy of this skill is to prioritize placement over personality. It helps developers determine if an agent is simply in the wrong job, if a single role should be split into multiple specialized roles, or if a capability should remain reserved rather than instantiated. By establishing clear boundaries and handoff protocols, Agent Sorting Hat creates a stable foundation for more detailed character and identity work.
Agent Sorting Hat Use Cases
- Diagnosing why an agent feels wrong or is failing to execute its assigned tasks.
- Determining if a single agent should be split into multiple specialized roles to reduce complexity.
- Clarifying blurry boundaries between different agents in a multi-agent team.
- Resolving team structure problems where responsibilities overlap or gaps exist in the task chain.
- Redesigning agent roles during project pivots or when scaling team capabilities.
How Agent Sorting Hat Works
- Read current role context by analyzing persona files, team proposals, and registry documents.
- Identify the task chain to understand the actual work sequence from research to execution.
- Diagnose the problem type as role misalignment, team gap, operating issues, or persona problems.
- Decide the fate of each role: whether to keep, move, split, merge, or reserve the capability.
- Redesign the team placement map including responsibilities, non-responsibilities, and handoff directions.
- Sequence the change plan to update team-level documentation before individual role files.
- Hand off the finalized structural roles for persona refinement using other Openclaw Skills.
Agent Sorting Hat Setup
To deploy this skill within your environment, ensure the skill definition is accessible to your orchestrator. Use the following structure to initiate a diagnostic session:
# Trigger a role alignment audit for a specific team directory
openclaw-agent run agent-sorting-hat --path ./project/agents
Ensure that you have read access to all relevant persona and team-state documents to allow the skill to identify the full task chain accurately.
Agent Sorting Hat Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill produces a structured diagnostic output and a role map organized as follows:
| Data Component | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnosis Report | Markdown List | Identifies primary problem types (e.g., Role Misalignment, Team Gap) and logic. |
| Role Alignment | Markdown List | Specifies which agents stay, move, split, or merge. |
| Team Map | Structured List | Details core responsibilities, non-responsibilities, and handoff directions for each role. |
| Update Sequence | Numbered List | A prioritized plan for editing team docs, registry files, and then persona files. |
Agent Sorting Hat Advanced Features
- Role Splitting vs. Capability Reserving: Logic to determine if a task requires a full agent or just a reserved instruction set.
- Handoff Directionality: Defines exactly how data flows between roles to prevent execution deadlocks.
- Placement-First Logic: Prevents premature persona rewriting when the underlying structural issue is role misalignment.
- Integration with Ollivanders: Seamless workflow handoff to persona-focused Openclaw Skills once structural boundaries are set.
SKILL.md
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