Introduction
Squad Federation
Section titled “Squad Federation”Squad Federation coordinates multiple autonomous AI teams working on different aspects of a project. Talk to Copilot skills to set up teams, launch work, and monitor progress — the system handles the mechanics automatically.
What Is Squad Federation?
Section titled “What Is Squad Federation?”Instead of a single monolithic agent handling everything, you create specialized teams that each focus on their domain — frontend, backend, infrastructure, testing, documentation — and let them work in parallel. Each team has its own workspace, skills, and lifecycle.
How You Use It
Section titled “How You Use It”You interact with Squad Federation through conversational skills in Copilot:
Setting up: “Set up a federation for my project” → The setup skill walks you through federation configuration with guided questions.
Adding teams: “Onboard a team for auth” → The onboarding skill asks what the team should do, discovers the right archetype, and creates the workspace.
Launching work: “Launch the auth team” → The team starts working in a headless session.
Monitoring: “How’s my federation doing?” → The orchestration skill shows team status and progress.
You don’t run scripts manually or create config files by hand. The skills handle those details.
Core Concepts
Section titled “Core Concepts”Three Layers
Section titled “Three Layers”Squad Federation operates on three layers:
1. Placement (per-team): WHERE each team’s workspace lives
- Git worktrees with dedicated branches
- Standalone directories
- Teams can use different placement types in the same federation
2. Communication (federation-scoped): HOW teams exchange messages
- File-based signals — fast, local, works offline
- Optional Teams notifications — meta-squad posts summaries to a Teams channel for human visibility
- Extensible adapter registry for future transports
3. Knowledge (shared): WHAT teams learn and share
- Each team logs discoveries, patterns, and insights
- Cross-team patterns are detected and promoted into reusable skills
- Skills sync to all teams automatically
Team Archetypes
Section titled “Team Archetypes”Each team operates according to an archetype — a work pattern that defines what the team does and how it progresses:
- Coding - Writes code and opens pull requests
- Deliverable - Produces file artifacts (reports, specs, audit results, inventories)
- Consultant - Domain expert teams that answer questions
You pick the archetype during onboarding based on what the team needs to do.
Key Features
Section titled “Key Features”- Conversational setup - Skills guide you through federation creation, team onboarding, and configuration
- Autonomous operation - Teams work independently in headless sessions
- Signal-based coordination - Teams send directives, questions, reports, and alerts via structured messages
- Knowledge lifecycle - Learnings are captured, swept for patterns, and graduated into shared skills
- Real-time observability - Optional OpenTelemetry dashboard shows traces, metrics, and logs from all teams
Who Is This For?
Section titled “Who Is This For?”Squad Federation is designed for:
- Software teams managing complex multi-component projects
- Platform engineers coordinating infrastructure, security, and application teams
- Engineering managers scaling AI assistance across multiple concurrent workstreams
- DevOps teams automating parallel deployment and testing workflows