Managers and MCP coordination

A SwarmForge manager is the trusted MCP client or agent that assigns tasks, observes workers and decides what to do with their results. SwarmForge provides orchestration tools; it does not supply the manager’s reasoning model.

Connect through MCP

Run swarmforge serve and connect a client that supports MCP Streamable HTTP to the configured /mcp URL. The default address is http://127.0.0.1:8787/mcp. When bearer authentication is configured, the client must supply the deployment’s token.

The application README includes an OpenCode remote-MCP configuration example. Other clients need support for the same transport and authentication; a coding product’s name alone does not establish compatibility. The current worker runtime remains OpenCode regardless of which supported MCP client manages it.

What harness-agnostic orchestration means

A coding harness is the runtime that gives an agent access to tools, files and an execution session. Harness-agnostic orchestration separates coordination from a particular harness. SwarmForge exposes its manager interface through MCP, so a compatible manager client can coordinate work without being the worker runtime.

This distinction does not mean arbitrary worker harnesses are supported today. The shipped worker runtime is OpenCode; native Codex and Claude Code worker backends are not implemented. Verify a manager’s Streamable HTTP and authentication support separately from worker and model compatibility.

Delegate and observe

Managers create workers with spawn_worker, inspect them with get_worker, read persisted results with get_worker_result, and continue sessions with send_message. wait_for_state_change observes the durable lifecycle log with a resumable cursor instead of repeatedly polling full worker records.

A manager can assign independent coding, review and documentation tasks concurrently. It should choose disjoint change scopes where possible and explicitly sequence tasks whose inputs depend on another worker’s output.

Review before integrating

Review the reported changes, test results, artifacts and Git handoff. Worker summaries are not independent verification. SwarmForge can preserve deliverables and verify a configured branch push, but it does not automatically open pull requests, merge branches or resolve conflicting changes.

A failed worker, preservation refusal or ambiguous dispatch may require operator inspection. Recovery guidance helps select the next action; blindly replaying a possibly delivered coding instruction can repeat mutations.

Keep trust explicit

MCP leads share trusted access to the deployment. Team labels do not isolate users or repositories. Remote exposure requires configured accepted hosts, a bearer token and externally supplied TLS/network controls. The public website is separate from this private control-plane interface.