crank

Crank Skill

Quick Ref: Autonomous epic execution. /swarm for each wave with runtime-native spawning. Output: closed issues + phase-2 handoff for /validate.

YOU MUST EXECUTE THIS WORKFLOW. Do not just describe it.

Loop position

Move 5 (wave execution) of the operating loop. Consumes the slice validation plan; produces wave-by-wave slice completion via /swarm + /implement. Each slice runs the canonical narrow-waist micro-cycle: its acceptance test authored RED before code is the slice contract, and refactor-under-green is its own wave, never optional (references/wave-patterns.md) — a refactor wave must change no test. Hard gate at wave start: every row of the wave-validity check must pass (distinct write scopes, no shared migration/contract/CLI surface, declared integration order, owner per slice, discard path per slice). Any failed row → run those slices sequential, not parallel. Coupled-chain rule: two slices that both regenerate a shared derived surface (cli-command-surface / registry.json / context-map / codex manifest) collide even with disjoint source files — run them as a sequential chain, each link branched off the freshly-MERGED prior link. Parallelism is explicit ownership, not swarm chaos.

Autonomous execution: implement all issues until the epic is DONE.

Feed the orchestrator's re-plan loop — don't swallow findings into a silent retry. When run under /rpi, surface what a wave proved or broke UP to the orchestrator. A failed or surprising wave is re-plan input, not just a retry target: per the /rpi Agile Re-Plan Loop, the remaining waves may be refactored, inserted, dropped, or reordered before the next one runs. Re-cranking the same objective forever instead of letting the remaining plan change is the waterfall anti-pattern.

CLI dependencies: br (issue tracking, via BEADS_DIR="$(ao beads dir)" br), ao (knowledge flywheel). Both optional — see skills/shared/SKILL.md for fallback table. If br is unavailable, use TaskList for issue tracking and skip beads sync. If ao is unavailable, skip knowledge injection/extraction.

For Claude runtime feature coverage (agents/hooks/worktree/settings), the shared source of truth is skills/shared/references/claude-code-latest-features.md, mirrored locally at references/claude-code-latest-features.md.

Architecture: Crank + Swarm

Crank owns orchestration, epic/task lifecycle, and knowledge-flywheel steps. Swarm owns runtime-native worker spawning, fresh-context isolation, per-wave execution, and cleanup. In beads mode Crank gets each wave from ao beads exec ready (tracker- and ledger-agnostic — it resolves bd or br and its ledger automatically), bridges issues into worker tasks, verifies results, and syncs status back to beads. In TaskList mode the same loop runs over pending unblocked tasks instead of beads issues.

Read references/team-coordination.md for the full per-wave execution model, references/ralph-loop-contract.md for the fresh-context worker contract, and references/worker-specs.md for per-worker model/tool/prompt specs.

Flags

Global Limits

MAX_EPIC_WAVES = 50 (hard limit across entire epic)

This prevents infinite loops on circular dependencies or cascading failures. Typical epics use 5–10 waves max.

Completion Enforcement (The Sisyphus Rule)

Not done until you emit an explicit completion marker after each wave:

• <promise>DONE</promise> when the epic is truly complete
• <promise>BLOCKED</promise> when progress cannot continue
• <promise>PARTIAL</promise> when work remains

Never claim completion without one of these markers.

Node Repair Operator

When a task fails during wave execution, classify as RETRY (transient — re-add with adjustment, max 2), DECOMPOSE (too complex — split into sub-issues, terminal), or PRUNE (blocked — escalate immediately). Budget: 2 per task. Read references/failure-recovery.md for classification signals and recovery commands.

Mutation logging on failure classification:

• DECOMPOSE: Log task_removed for the original task, then task_added for each new sub-task.
• PRUNE: Log task_removed with the block reason.
• RETRY: No mutation (task identity unchanged).

Execution Steps

Given /crank [epic-id | .agents/rpi/execution-packet.json | plan-file.md | "description"]:

Preflight (Recovery hooks → Step 3a.3)

Read references/execution-preflight.md when you need recovery-hook setup, effort/tier mapping, knowledge-context loading (Step 0), tracking-mode detection (0.5), gc-pool detection (0.6), epic identification (Step 1), branch isolation (1.5), wave-counter / mutation-trail / shared-task-notes initialization (1a–1a.2), test-first classification (1b), epic details (Step 2), ready-issue listing (Step 3), and the four pre-flight checks (3a, 3a.1 pre-mortem, 3a.2 bd-audit, 3a.3 changed-string grep).

The Branch Isolation Gate (Step 1.5) has its own dedicated contract — see references/branch-isolation.md for when crank must create or refuse an isolation branch.

Wave dispatch (Step 3b → Step 4)

Read references/wave-dispatch.md when you need SPEC WAVE / TEST WAVE / RED Gate flow (Steps 3b–3c), context-briefing assembly (3b.1), shared-notes injection (3b.2), parallel-wave isolation (3b.3), or Step 4 wave execution detail — GREEN mode, issue-typing + file manifests, grep-for-existing-functions, validation metadata policy, acceptance-criteria injection, language-standards injection, file-ownership table, wave-counter / 50-cap gate, spec-consistency gate, cross-cutting constraint injection, gc-pool dispatch, and cross-cutting validation.

Wave completion (Step 5 → Step 8.7)

Read references/wave-completion.md when you need verify-and-sync (Step 5, external-gate protocol), wave acceptance check + CI-policy parity gate (5.5), wave checkpoint + per-criterion verdicts + back-compat fallback (5.7), validation-context checkpoint (5.7b), shared-task-notes harvest (5.7c), plan-mutation logging (5.7d), wave status report (5.8), worktree base-SHA refresh (5.9), check-for-more-work loop (Step 6), de-sloppify pass (6.5), pre-validation lifecycle checks (6.9), final batched validation (Step 7), phase-2 summary (Step 8), learnings extraction (8.5), shared-notes archive (8.6), and the scope-completion pre-close gate (8.7).

Step 5.5 includes the CI-Policy Parity Gate: if a wave diff touches .github/workflows/*.yml, run bash scripts/validate-ci-policy-parity.sh; any non-zero exit fails wave acceptance and surfaces the generated drift report. See references/wave-patterns.md "CI-Policy Parity Gate" for the worked example and trigger pattern.

Step 9: Report Completion

Tell the user:

1. Epic ID and title
2. Number of issues completed
3. Total iterations used (of 50 max)
4. Final validation (/validate --mode=post-impl, absorbs vibe) results
5. Flywheel status (if ao available)
6. Suggest running /validate to complete closeout and promote learnings

Output completion marker:

<promise>DONE</promise>
Epic: <epic-id>
Issues completed: N
Iterations: M/50
Flywheel: <status from ao metrics flywheel status>

If stopped early:

<promise>BLOCKED</promise>
Reason: <global limit reached | unresolvable blockers>
Issues remaining: N
Iterations: M/50

Land Loop (per-bead, direct-main)

Crank lands each bead's slice to main directly — PR-per-bead is retired for THIS repo (external-repo variant at the end of this section). Land each bead from its own worktree, one at a time:

1. Isolate. The bead's slice is committed on HEAD in the bead's own git worktree (never the shared checkout), the HEAD message citing the bead id (the gate + pawl resolve the bead from it).
2. Gate. ao gate check --fast --scope head — the local cockpit gate (also the pre-push hook; run it manually to fail fast). Fix-forward stale/transient reds, never revert green work; regenerate drifted derived surfaces (registry.json / contracts-sync → make regen-all, scoped via --skills when only some skills changed) and commit them WITH the change.
3. Review — the mutate-shared-trunk pawl. pawl-review runs immutable fresh reviewer lanes and hands evidence to ao pawl; ao pawl alone applies diversity, commit binding, and admission (docs/contracts/pawls.md; /pawl-review). CONFIRMED requires all refuters confirmed, the selected diversity floor, real nonempty evidence, and a verdict bound to the live head. No CONFIRMED verdict means no land. REFUTED routes back to re-work; circuit-breaker exhaustion HOLDs.
4. Land. bash scripts/pawl-land.sh <bead> — fetch + rebase onto current origin/main, restamp the CONFIRMED verdict onto the post-rebase feat, single-shot push origin HEAD:main. Aborts without pushing on a rebase conflict (resolve locally, re-run pawl-review if the tree changed, re-land).
5. Close on landed-only. ao beads exec close a child bead ONLY after its commit is confirmed on trunk — git fetch origin main && git merge-base --is-ancestor <feat-sha> origin/main — never on a log line or a batch br --json query (those flake to null/0).
6. Epic-close gate. NEVER close a parent epic before EVERY child bead's commit is confirmed an ancestor of origin/main (re-check git merge-base --is-ancestor per child; each child br CLOSED). One unlanded child aborts the close. (Post-mortem governance checkpoint: hard gate, not advisory.)

Close checkpoint — a closed bead is a sensor reading (age-cysr)

Not a checkbox (the flywheel): the close is the loop's highest-signal, membrane-verified evidence. On EVERY close (step 5) answer two questions before moving on:

1. What did completing this bead teach? (one line — usually "nothing new", and that's fine)
2. Does it CONTRADICT an assumption the remaining plan depends on?

If no → proceed to the next bead. If yes (a falsified plan assumption) → re-plan the remaining slices NOW, not at the wave boundary: invoke /discovery as the re-plan engine over the remaining DAG (split / re-order / add / drop beads) and record the trigger in the close reason (replan: <falsified assumption>). Anti-thrash guard: the trigger is a falsified plan assumption ONLY — most closes teach nothing; never re-plan on mere surprise, difficulty, or a new idea (park those for /post-mortem). Andon bound: a re-plan that would rework the same remaining DAG a 3rd time escalates to the human instead of re-planning again.

Multi-lane serialization + by-hand land. When several lanes land onto a hot main at once, or when you land by hand via the ao pawl review CLI (which sets PAWL_UNTRUSTED_REPO=1 and SKIPS auto-bind, so the sealed bind is manual), follow the serialized land-token discipline and the exact [feat, #trivial-bind] command sequence in references/land-protocol.md — one land at a time across lanes, ao provenance emit-verdict for the sealed bind (never a hand-appended ledger edge), and git merge-base --is-ancestor before every ao beads exec close.

Enforce steps 3–4 with the committed scripts, not by hand: scripts/pawl-review.sh <bead> --scope head --author-family <family> (runs the refuter; on CONFIRMED writes + verifies the commit-bound verdict via scripts/pawl-verdict.sh, REFUTED exit 3 prints the defects) then scripts/pawl-land.sh <bead> (rebase → restamp → single-shot push). The epic-close gate is scripts/check-epic-children-closed.sh <epic> (no-epic-close-with-open-child). All are hermetic-tested under tests/scripts/.

External-repo variant (PR flow). When crank targets an external repo (an upstream fork where you cannot push main), the land half becomes a PR: prepare it with /pr-prep, then reconcile mechanically with scripts/reconcile-pr.sh <pr> <bead> [--epic <epic>] (polls gh pr checks, reruns the lone correctness-ubuntu flake once, verifies the CONFIRMED pawl verdict via scripts/pawl-verdict.sh check <bead> <pr> --head <live-sha> — exit 5/HOLD if absent/REFUTED/ESCALATE/stale-head/no-evidence, merges gh pr merge --squash --admin, closes the bead only on confirmed MERGED). This path is for external targets only — never for landing AgentOps' own beads.

The FIRE Loop

Crank repeats FIRE (Find → Ignite → Reap → Vibe → Escalate) for each wave until all issues are CLOSED (beads) or all tasks are completed (TaskList). Read references/wave-patterns.md for the loop model, parallel wave rules, and acceptance check details.

Key Rules

• Auto-detect tracking (br first, TaskList fallback) and use the provided epic or plan input directly.
• Use /swarm for every wave, preserve fresh per-issue context, and refuse to continue past unresolved conflicts or the 50-wave cap.
• Per-wave validation is chaos, not a pawl (docs/contracts/pawls.md): use lightweight inline checks between waves. Reserve /validate, council, and /pawl-review evidence for the bead-acceptance / merge-to-main pawl, not every intermediate wave.
• Load learnings at the start, extract learnings at the end, and always emit DONE, BLOCKED, or PARTIAL.

Folded triggers (ag-s43tg wave 1): burndown + ship-loop route here

• burndown → bounded epic mode. Use when you need to drive a finite epic set to all-merged, then stop — finishing a specific list of tasks, burning down a backlog epic, or executing a bounded set of beads until done. Crank's per-wave loop with a fixed input set (epic-id or bead list) and the epic-close gate IS the burndown: no new-work discovery, terminate on all-closed.
• ship-loop → single-bead fast lane. Use when running the fast-lane internal ship cycle for one closable bead or small slice: claim, test, implement, gate, pawl-review, pawl-land, close. That is a one-issue, one-wave crank — the Land Loop above (CONFIRMED pawl verdict + landed-on-trunk before close) owns the land/close half.

Verb Disambiguation for Worker Prompts

Read references/worker-verb-disambiguation.md for the verb clarification table. Ambiguous verbs (extract, remove, update, consolidate) cause workers to implement wrong operations — always use explicit instructions with wc -l assertions.

Examples

User says: /crank ag-m0r — Beads epic: loads learnings, swarm per wave, loops until all closed, final validation. User says: /crank .agents/plans/auth-refactor.md — Plan file: decomposes into tasks, swarm per wave, final validation. User says: /crank --test-first ag-xj9 — SPEC → TEST → RED Gate → GREEN IMPL. See references/test-first-mode.md.

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Output Specification

Format: committed code plus a markdown progress/closeout summary to stdout; per-slice slice-validation roll-ups. Files: reads .agents/rpi/execution-packet.json; writes wave/slice results under .agents/swarm/results/; closes beads via ao beads exec close in the resolved bead ledger. Exit signal: <promise>DONE</promise> (all slices accepted) · <promise>PARTIAL</promise> (retry the same objective) · <promise>BLOCKED</promise> (manual intervention).

Troubleshooting

Common failure modes: no ready issues, repeated wave gate failures, missing files from workers, bad RED-gate output, or TaskList/beads mismatches. See references/troubleshooting.md for fixes and command-level recovery steps.

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Inline Work Policy

Most /crank steps delegate worker execution via /swarm or Skill(). A small number of steps are orchestrator-owned by design — these are inline gates, scans, and bookkeeping that must stay in the orchestrator's context to make a downstream decision. Orchestrator-owned steps are marked with a *(orchestrator-owned: …)* admonition in the body (see STEP 3a.3, STEP 6.5 slop-scan, STEP 8.7).

Do NOT convert orchestrator-owned steps into Skill() or /swarm delegations — they are intentionally inline. Every other step (SPEC wave, TEST wave, IMPL wave, validation, lifecycle checks) should delegate via the documented Skill(...) call or /swarm invocation.

If unsure whether a step is orchestrator-owned or delegatable, the default is delegate. Only steps marked with the admonition above are exempt.

Crank runs as an isolated phase-2 execution context — discovery and validation are sealed off from this skill. See references/isolation-contract.md for the four-lever enforcement model and the compression patterns scripts/check-skill-isolation.sh flags. See references/best-practices.md for the lifecycle principle + anti-pattern citation table (cite by number; do not duplicate body content).

Related skills

• /agent-native — portable persistent-worker lifecycle; use /ntm for NTM pane mechanics.

Reference Documents

• references/crank.feature — Executable spec: wave-validity hard gate, FIRE loop, mandatory completion marker, 50-wave cap (soc-qk4b.2)

• references/de-sloppify.md

• references/execution-preflight.md

• references/parallel-wave-isolation.md

• references/plan-mutations.md

• references/shared-task-notes.md

• references/claude-code-latest-features.md

• references/commit-strategies.md

• references/worktree-per-worker.md

• references/contract-template.md

• references/failure-recovery.md

• references/land-protocol.md — serialized multi-lane land protocol: land-token, the [feat, #trivial-bind] sequence, stale-bind drop, failure playbook (age-e508.3)

• references/failure-taxonomy.md

• references/fire.md

• references/gc-pool-dispatch.md

• references/ralph-loop-contract.md

• references/taskcreate-examples.md

• references/team-coordination.md

• references/test-first-mode.md

• references/troubleshooting.md

• references/phase-data-contracts.md — phase artifact data contracts (cited from references/isolation-contract.md)

• references/uat-integration-wave.md

• references/wave-completion.md

• references/wave-dispatch.md

• references/wave1-spec-consistency-checklist.md

• references/wave-patterns.md

• references/worker-verb-disambiguation.md

• references/external-gate-protocol.md

• references/ship-loop-anti-patterns.md — absorbed ship-loop anti-pattern catalog (ag-s43tg)