Route 1: the Orca plugin (recommended)
The plugin ships theuse-orca skill (which teaches Claude the golden paths) and auto-registers the Orca MCP server for every session:
Route 2: MCP server only
If you already have theorca CLI installed and signed in:
First run
Inside a Claude Code session, ask for anything Orca-shaped, for example: “create an Orca agent that triages my support inbox and run it against these three sample tickets.” Claude will walk the loop itself:orca doctor --jsonto check the install, thencurl -fsSL https://orcapods.ai/install.sh | shif the CLI is missing.orca login: in an agent context this automatically uses the device flow. Claude relays a one-time code and a URL; you open the URL on any device, check the code matches, and approve. The CLI picks up its key by polling; no key ever passes through the chat.whoami,create_agent,run_agent,wait_for_runover MCP (or the--jsonCLI equivalents) to do the work.
A worked transcript
Notes
- The MCP server resolves credentials lazily (flag, then
ORCA_API_KEY, then the CLI context config), so registering it before the first login is fine; tools answer with the exact fix until you sign in. - Everything not covered by a dedicated tool is reachable through the
api_requesttool, documented by the live spec at theorca://openapiresource. - Headless auth details, including CI: Headless authentication.