The Governed Loop

The skills chain into a single governed development loop. This page shows how they connect end to end, where checkpoints halt for approval, and what binds them together.

The loop

How the skills chain

In the order AGENTS.md "Working the backlog" runs it. One spec per session.

Phase	Skill	What happens	Output
Prime	/prime	Execute the New Sessions protocol: rules, parallel reads, spec-spine check, lifecycle counts. Reads only	primed: summary
Pick	/next	The ready set from registry plan, minus drafts, with in-flight specs and blockers named	one spec id
Build	/build <id>	Preflight, branch, flip in-progress, implement inside the territory, the gate before every commit (/commit), /verify, flip complete	commits on the feature branch
Ship	/ship	The gate locally, /code-review on the diff, /commit, push, gh pr create. The waiver is a human checkpoint	an open PR
Shepherd	/shepherd	Checks by head sha, review threads, remediation through the gate (two rounds), squash merge, merge confirmed on disk	the merged default branch
Verify	/verify <id>	The spec's ## Verification block through spec-spine verify, the verb an orchestrator's verify stage runs after merge	exit codes, honestly
File	/spec	The next spec at the next free ordinal, born draft; approval stays a human flip	a draft spec

/setup runs once per contributor before any of this. /commit and /code-review are the two skills the loop calls rather than stages of it.

Checkpoint discipline

Checkpoints are real stops where a skill halts and waits for a human:

1. /build preflight: a draft spec, an unmet dependency, a dirty tree, a missing operator prerequisite, or a contradiction between the spec and what the code must do.
2. /ship waiver: if the coupling gate fails and a Spec-Drift-Waiver: is the only remedy. Standing authorization never covers this.
3. /ship PR creation: before pushing and opening the PR (outward-facing), unless the session carries an orchestrator's run-start authorization.
4. /shepherd: a DIRTY or BEHIND PR, a third red round, or a waiver-shaped failure.

An agent that blows past a checkpoint violates orchestrator-rules.

Halting rules

The loop stops, reports full context, and does not improvise when:

• a local CI failure is not mechanically fixable;
• the coupling gate fails and neither fixing the coupling nor a waiver is appropriate;
• a spec edit would retroactively justify a contradicting action (the coherence guard, see adversarial-prompt-refusal);
• any step cannot proceed without improvising outside the playbook.

Key dependencies

Dependency	Skills that require it
spec-spine CLI	every skill; /setup installs the pinned version
the gate as AGENTS.md lists it	/build, /ship, /shepherd
a pre-PR gate (coupling + index freshness)	/ship, and the PreToolUse hook
orchestrator-rules	every orchestrated skill
governed-artifact-reads	every .derived/ read
gh CLI	/ship, /shepherd