Quick start: Claude Agent Teams in 3 steps

Before you start

Agent Teams is an experimental Claude Code feature. It requires the CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1 flag and may have non-deterministic behaviors. Do not use as an automated production pipeline without supervision.

Prerequisites

• Claude Code — installed and configured with your API key
• Docker — to run the Hermit portal
• jq — to verify skills via API (brew install jq on macOS)

Step 1: Repository

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/nneira/claude-agent-teams-skill-factory
   cd claude-agent-teams-skill-factory

2. Copy the environment file:

   cp .env.example .env

   The .env needs your Hermit token — you generate it in step 3.

Step 2: Enable Agent Teams

Add the experimental variable to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS": "1"
  }
}

Note

If the file doesn’t exist, create it. If you already have other settings in env, add the key inside the same object.

Step 3: Hermit portal

1. Clone and launch Hermit:

   git clone https://github.com/hermit-labs/hermit
   cd hermit
   docker compose up -d

   Portal available at http://localhost:8080.

2. Generate the API token:

   Open http://localhost:8080/admin → Settings → API Keys → Generate.

3. Copy the token to your .env in the project repo:

   HERMIT_TOKEN=your_token_here
   HERMIT_URL=http://localhost:8080

Verify everything works

Confirm Hermit responds correctly:

source .env
curl -s http://localhost:8080/api/v1/skills \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HERMIT_TOKEN" | jq '.[] | .name'

If it returns an empty array [] or existing skill names, you’re ready to go.

Use the factory

From the project root, open Claude Code:

claude

Example prompt:

I need a skill to create a VM on Google Cloud with Terraform.

The Lead detects blocking ambiguities and asks before starting. Reply and the pipeline runs on its own until the skill is published to the portal.

Tip

The Lead only asks when information is truly blocking — if it can use a generic placeholder (<PROJECT_ID>, <REGION>), it won’t ask. It only asks when the provider or scope are ambiguous and can’t be inferred.

Verify the published skill

After the Publisher finishes:

curl -s http://localhost:8080/api/v1/skills \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HERMIT_TOKEN" | jq '.[] | {name, version, description}'

The skill is also installed locally at ~/.claude/skills/skill-name/SKILL.md.

→ See the full architecture