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ship master orchestrator (v3) — Stage ⑤

Overview

The 5th stage, after Verify. harnessed has the pieces (a release-preflight gate, gstack /ship, publish.yml CI) — this master orchestrates them into one repeatable release path, the way comet (archive), Trellis (finish-work), and Claude-Harness (/harness-release) each close their loop.

order/mode	sub	when fires
1 (serial)	preflight	always when stage=='ship' — read-only release-readiness gate

After preflight passes, the master delegates PR + deploy to gstack /ship (composition — harnessed does not reimplement it), and the actual npm publish + GitHub release happen in publish.yml CI on tag push.

Process

1. preflight (always) — run harnessed release-preflight. If any check fails (most often an empty ## [Unreleased]), STOP and document the release / clean the tree first.
2. PR / deploy (delegate) — invoke gstack /ship for PR creation + pre-land review.
3. publish (CI) — push the v<version> tag (with explicit user approval) → publish.yml runs npm publish + creates the GitHub release.

Boundary (important)

This stage stops at tag-ready. It never pushes to the remote, never publishes to npm, and never creates a git tag on its own. Those are CI + explicit-approval actions, by design — "PR ready != release ready", and "release ready != already published".

How to invoke

!harnessed checkpoint intent ship

The banner above (when present) means this invocation is REGISTERED with the engine (an intent marker) — not yet compliant: steps 2-3 below seed the ledger, and a per-turn <workflow-intent> reminder persists until they run.

The numbered sequence below is the state machine — execute it step by step with Bash. Do NOT improvise an equivalent flow from the Overview above: freelancing bypasses the engine (no per-sub ledger, no evidence guard, no recovery). harnessed is the orchestration brain (harnessed gates says which subs fire, harnessed prompt gives each spawn-ready prompt, harnessed checkpoint records the ledger); YOU spawn with CC-native Task / Agent tools.

Do NOT pipe to harnessed run ship — that is the CI/headless path (in-process SDK spawn that blocks the session, bypasses Agent Teams, and hangs inside Claude Code).

1. If the clarification criteria fire for "$ARGUMENTS" (≥2 approaches / core algorithm / API contract / high error cost), clarify interactively in THIS session first (AskUserQuestion) and lock decisions; otherwise transparent-skip. Produce a locked spec.
2. Bash: harnessed gates ship --task "<locked spec>" --skip-sub clarify → parse the JSON {fire, skip, parallelism}. This is the plan SoT (no spawn). Keep the verbatim JSON.
3. Bash: harnessed checkpoint start ship --plan '<the verbatim gates JSON from step 2>' → seeds the per-sub ledger so harnessed status --recover can re-orient you after compaction.
4. If parallelism.escalate_to_teams === true: read ~/.claude/rules/agent-teams.md, then drive the fired subs as an Agent Team (TeamCreate → Agent(name, team_name, …) per sub with its harnessed prompt <sub> prompt → coordinate via SendMessage → SendMessage shutdown_request + TeamDelete). Still checkpoint each sub (complete / fail) as below.
5. Otherwise, for each fired sub in order (serial subs sequentially, parallel subs concurrently):
   • If the entry has is_master: true (a stage master — e.g. /auto firing plan/task/verify): do NOT prompt+spawn it. RECURSE: run that master’s own harnessed gates <sub> --task "<spec>" --skip-sub clarify → harnessed checkpoint start <sub> --plan '<json>' → repeat this loop for ITS fired subs.
   • Else (leaf sub): a. Bash: harnessed prompt <sub> --task "<spec>" --json → parse {prompt, max_iterations, model}. b. Spawn a CC-native subagent (Task / Agent tool) with that prompt + model, wrapped in the ralph-loop plugin: /ralph-loop "<prompt>" --max-iterations <max_iterations> --completion-promise "COMPLETE". If the plugin is absent, use the native goal gate instead (Claude Code 2.1.139+ / Codex): /goal "this subtask is delivered: the subagent's final output contains verbatim <promise>COMPLETE</promise>; or stop after <max_iterations> turns" then spawn the subagent and let the goal evaluator drive re-spawns until it clears. If /goal is unavailable too, self-loop: spawn → check output for <promise>COMPLETE</promise> → re-spawn with prior output appended (up to max_iterations). Set the goal only at the leaf subtask level — /goal is single-slot per session and a nested goal overwrites the outer one. c. If the output contains STATUS: NEEDS_CLARIFICATION + questions: STOP, relay them verbatim via AskUserQuestion, append the answers to the spec, then re-spawn the same sub. d. On <promise>COMPLETE</promise>: Bash harnessed checkpoint complete <sub> --summary "<one-line>". The evidence guard runs here (fail-CLOSED): if a declared artifacts_expected file is missing it exits non-zero — re-spawn to produce it, or pass --force only to deliberately override. e. If the sub cannot reach COMPLETE (max_iterations exhausted / unrecoverable error): Bash harnessed checkpoint fail <sub> --summary "<why>", then STOP and report to the user.
6. After all fired subs are done (or recorded failed), Bash harnessed status --recover to confirm the ledger and report a per-sub fired/skipped/done/failed summary to the user.

If you lose context (compaction / resume): run harnessed status --recover first — it reads the ledger and prints "you are here, this is next" so you resume at the first pending sub instead of restarting. If the ledger is empty, re-run steps 2-3.

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