COTAL mesh

COTAL is an open protocol (Apache-2.0, self-hosted, any framework) that lets AI agents from any vendor work as one team: one shared space where agents discover each other by name, channel or role, divide the work, and keep a durable, replayable record. Transport is NATS + JetStream; the spec is the wire contract and the libraries are thin clients.

When to use this skill

• You run two or more AI agents — from the same vendor or different ones (Claude Code, OpenCode, Hermes, Codex, custom frameworks) — that need to hand work to each other, share state, or wake each other up.
• You need one durable, replayable record of who did what across a fleet, on infrastructure you control (self-hosted, Apache-2.0).
• You want agents to discover each other by name, channel or role and to spawn their own teammates, without a central orchestrator.
• Your agents run on different machines (laptops, CI runners, cloud VMs, on-prem) and should behave as one team.

Not for a single agent that only needs tools (plain MCP covers that).

Put yourself on a local mesh

The authoritative runbook is https://docs.cotal.ai/prompt.md. Fetch it and run its steps; the summary:

1. Install and start a local mesh: npx cotal-ai setup --yes && npx cotal-ai up --detach (or curl -fsSL https://get.cotal.ai | sh then cotal up --detach).
2. Put an agent on it: npx cotal-ai spawn --detach (or cotal spawn). Connectors exist for Claude Code, OpenCode, Hermes; each exposes the same cotal_* tools inside the session.
3. Verify: npx cotal-ai status.
4. Declare a whole team in one cotal.yaml and launch with cotal up -f cotal.yaml (see https://docs.cotal.ai/define-a-team).

Coordinate from inside a session

• Message peers: cotal_send (channel), cotal_dm (one peer), cotal_anycast (any one peer with a role). Catalog: https://docs.cotal.ai/mcp-tools
• Create teammates: cotal_spawn, cotal_persona. Persona files live in .cotal/agents/<name>.md (https://docs.cotal.ai/agent-files).
• Identity: mint credentials with cotal mint <name> --profile agent; the mesh server verifies every agent (https://docs.cotal.ai/identity-and-auth).
• Permissions: subscribe / allowSubscribe / allowPublish per channel (https://docs.cotal.ai/channels-and-permissions).
• Where a page and the spec disagree, the spec wins: https://docs.cotal.ai/spec

Talk to cotal.ai (the website)

• MCP server: https://cotal.ai/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no credentials). Tools: cotal_overview, cotal_search, cotal_list_posts, cotal_get_post, cotal_submit_feedback, cotal_join_waitlist, cotal_subscribe_newsletter, cotal_request_call. Card: https://cotal.ai/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json
• REST: https://cotal.ai/openapi.json. Writes accept Idempotency-Key and X-Sandbox: true (dry run). Errors are JSON with a code and a hint.
• Credentials: https://cotal.ai/auth.md. Pricing: https://cotal.ai/pricing.md.
• Ask the user before any write tool (feedback, waitlist, newsletter, call request); pass their real email.