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Genie Hacks

These aren’t theoretical. They’re patterns from real Genie users solving real problems — tested in production, not in blog posts. Every one of these cost someone a late night. Learn from our pain. What is a hack? Something non-obvious that makes Genie faster, cheaper, or more capable. The stuff we wish we’d known on day one. How to browse: Scan below, or use /genie-hacks search <keyword> to find what you need. Got one we missed? Submit it — or argue about it on Discord.

Provider switching

Use the right model for the right job

Teams & coordination

Multi-agent speed and org-scale patterns

Skills & automation

Batch runs and custom workflows

Hooks & integration

Event-driven automation and external tools

Provider switching

Hack 1: Provider Switching for Speed vs Safety

Problem: You want fast iteration during development but thorough review before merging. Using the same model for both wastes time or misses bugs. Solution: Use --provider and --model flags on genie spawn to assign different models to different roles. Fast models (Sonnet, Codex) handle implementation; capable models (Opus) handle review and architecture.
Benefit: 3-5x faster implementation cycles with the same review quality. Typical cost reduction of 60-70% on engineering tasks while maintaining Opus-level review. When to use: Any team with more than one agent. Especially effective for wishes with many execution groups where implementation is straightforward but review needs to be thorough.

Hack 2: BYOA (Bring Your Own API) for Domain Expertise

Problem: Your project has domain-specific patterns (ML pipelines, blockchain contracts, embedded systems) that general models handle poorly. You want to use a fine-tuned or specialized model. Solution: Configure a custom provider in your Genie setup that points to any OpenAI-compatible API. Genie’s provider system is model-agnostic — anything that speaks the chat completions protocol works.
Benefit: Domain-specific models produce better first-pass code for specialized tasks, reducing fix loops. The general-purpose reviewer catches integration issues the specialist misses. When to use: When your codebase has strong domain conventions that general models don’t follow well. Common for ML/data pipelines, smart contracts, embedded C, or projects with heavy DSL usage.

Teams & coordination

Hack 3: Pipeline Parallelization

Problem: A wish with 6 execution groups takes forever when run sequentially. Each group takes 10-15 minutes, so the total is over an hour. Solution: Structure your wish with independent execution groups and let Genie’s /work orchestrator dispatch them in parallel waves. Groups without dependencies run simultaneously.
Benefit: A 6-group wish that takes 90 minutes sequentially finishes in ~30 minutes with 3 parallel agents. The bottleneck shifts from execution to review. When to use: Wishes with 3+ execution groups where at least 2 groups have no shared dependencies. Best for feature work that spans backend, frontend, and infrastructure.

Hack 4: Multi-Team Coordination (Org-Scale)

Problem: You have multiple wishes in flight across different parts of the codebase. Teams step on each other, cause merge conflicts, and duplicate work. Solution: Use separate worktrees per team — Genie does this automatically with genie team create. Each team gets an isolated git worktree branching from dev, so they can’t interfere with each other. Coordinate merges through the /dream orchestrator which handles dependency ordering.
Benefit: Zero merge conflicts during development. Each team operates independently. The /dream orchestrator handles merge ordering so dependent wishes merge in the right sequence. When to use: When you have 2+ wishes that touch different parts of the codebase. Essential for teams running overnight batch execution where merge order matters.

Skills & automation

Hack 5: Overnight Batch Execution

Problem: You have 5 approved wishes queued up. Running them one-by-one during work hours wastes your time monitoring agents. Solution: Use the /dream skill to batch-execute SHIP-ready wishes overnight. Dream picks wishes from your brainstorm backlog, builds a dependency-ordered plan, spawns parallel agents, reviews PRs, and produces a wake-up report.
Benefit: Wake up to completed PRs instead of starting work from scratch. A typical overnight run ships 3-5 wishes while you sleep. When to use: When you have 2+ SHIP-ready wishes in your brainstorm backlog. Best triggered at end of day — give it 8+ hours for complex wish sets.
See the /dream skill reference for the full phase breakdown and configuration options.

Hack 6: Custom Skill for Repeated Workflows

Problem: You keep typing the same sequence of commands for a recurring task — like running migrations, seeding test data, and restarting the dev server. It’s error-prone and tedious to explain each time. Solution: Create a custom skill file. Skills are just Markdown with YAML frontmatter — drop a file in skills/<name>/SKILL.md and it becomes a slash command instantly. No code, no registration, no build step.
Benefit: Encode your team’s tribal knowledge into reusable, version-controlled workflows. New team members (human or agent) get the same consistency. When to use: Any workflow you’ve explained more than twice. Common examples: deploy to staging, run specific test suites, update API docs, generate client SDKs.
See Skills concept guide for frontmatter options and trigger configuration.

Hooks & integration

Hack 7: Auto-Spawn on Wish Creation

Problem: After creating a wish with /wish, you still have to manually create a team and spawn agents. That’s 2-3 extra commands before work begins. Solution: Genie’s hook system fires events on every tool use. The auto-spawn handler already restarts crashed agents — you can extend this pattern by adding a hook that listens for wish file creation and automatically kicks off a team.
Benefit: Zero-friction from idea to execution. Type /wish, describe what you want, and agents start working immediately after the plan is written. When to use: When you want a fully autonomous pipeline where brainstorming flows directly into execution. Combine with /dream for batch mode.
This auto-spawns a team for every wish creation. Add a confirmation step or status check if you want human approval before execution begins.

Hack 8: Slack/Discord Integration via NATS Hooks

Problem: You want to monitor agent progress from Slack or Discord instead of watching tmux panes. You also want to trigger agents from chat. Solution: Genie emits events to NATS on every tool call, message delivery, and agent response. Subscribe to these NATS subjects and forward them to your chat platform’s webhook API.
Benefit: Real-time visibility into agent work from anywhere. No need to SSH into the server or watch tmux. Teams can monitor overnight /dream runs from their phones. When to use: Remote teams, overnight batch runs, or any scenario where you’re not sitting in front of the terminal. Especially useful with /dream for wake-up notifications.
See the Hooks reference for the full list of NATS subjects and payload formats.

Contributing

Have a hack that’s not here? We want it. The best docs come from people who actually hit the problem.

Format

Every hack follows this structure — keep it concrete, skip the theory:

Categories

Submit via PR

The fastest way to contribute:
Or use /genie-hacks contribute for guided PR creation.

Community

Half-baked idea? Wild theory? Something that worked but you’re not sure why? That’s what Discord is for.

Discord

Share hacks, argue about patterns, and help us figure out what’s next.