Operational Readiness & Capability Audit
ORCA is a multi-phase operational diagnostics method for Claude Code that maps how work actually flows through an organization, measures what friction costs, identifies where to intervene, and produces an executable project plan.
Feed it access to your live systems. It maps every process, quantifies the operational tax on each one, tells you which interventions will reclaim the most margin, and gives you the project plan to execute against. Diagnosis through implementation, not just a report.
Phase 1: Operational Mapping
Phase 2: Friction Measurement
Phase 3: Intervention Prioritization
Phase 4: Implementation Planning
Each phase is role-locked. The mapper can't recommend. The measurer can't prioritize. The prioritizer can't invent findings the mapper didn't surface. The implementation planner can't invent interventions the prioritizer didn't recommend. An automated critic reviews each phase before a human gate lets the next one proceed.
- 6 skills that install into Claude Code
- 4 core phases that progress from observation to measurement to prioritization to execution
- 1 orchestrator that chains everything with quality gates
- 1 critic that reviews every phase automatically
./install-orca.shOr see INSTALL.md for details.
Open Claude Code in any project directory and run:
/orca-run
The orchestrator walks you through intake, operational mapping, friction measurement, intervention prioritization, and implementation planning. For a lighter touch, run just the map:
/orca-map
This gives you the operational map: how work actually flows, where humans are doing machine work, where processes are missing entirely. No measurement, no prioritization. Just the map.
Every ORCA engagement starts with one question: "Where is your margin going?"
The answer isn't always where you think. ORCA doesn't ask people what they do. It observes what actually happens across connected systems. The gap between "how we think we work" and "how we actually work" is where the margin lives.
ORCA is part of a family of open-source diagnostic methods:
| Method | What it diagnoses | Repo |
|---|---|---|
| SEAL | "What's actually true here, verified against evidence?" | seal-method |
| ORCA | "Where is the margin going and what's the highest-leverage operational fix?" | This repo |
| BEAR | "What changed in your market and what does it mean for your positioning?" | bear-method |
SEAL is a forensic auditor working from documents. ORCA is an operational diagnostician with direct access to the patient. BEAR diagnoses the market environment outside the business. They can inform each other but none requires the others.
- ORCA-Method.md -- full methodology: architecture, all four phases, failure modes, intervention taxonomy
- ORCA-DNA.md -- intellectual lineage: where each phase's ideas come from and where they diverge
- Claude Code (Anthropic's CLI)
- Claude Max or Team subscription
- macOS or Linux (Windows: use WSL)
MIT. See LICENSE.