Press

/press

Press may add or strengthen tests and make tiny corrective fixes only when a test exposes a clear defect in the cooked scope.

--hard propagation

/press --hard (propagated from /cook --hard) is pass-through only. Press runs no gate. Hand --hard forward to /age at the handoff so it eventually reaches /cure, which is the only pipeline skill that fires the metacognitive vibecheck. See skills/hard-cheese/SKILL.md.

Baseline-aware gates

When the cooked diff's handoff slug carries a recorded baseline: block, press re-runs the project's gates but does not re-flag or re-halt on failures identical to that baseline (same test, same signature) — only new or changed failures affect readiness. See ../cook/references/quality-gates.md for the classification and policy.

Flow

1. Read — load the spec or acceptance criteria and the cooked diff. If .cheese/glossary/<slug>.md exists, read it for naming consistency when hardening tests.
2. Map — for each changed behaviour, find the test(s) that cover it through semantic caller search.
3. Gap analysis — identify weak assertions, missing boundaries, and uncovered integration seams. See references/gap-analysis.md for what counts as a gap and the priority order.
4. Add focused tests — observe red first when behaviour changes. Apply precise stale-safe edits.
5. Corrective fixes — only for defects the hardening tests expose. No new behaviour.
6. Run checks — narrowest useful tests, then relevant wider gates already in the project. When the handoff carries a baseline: block, classify gate failures against it per ../cook/references/quality-gates.md: identical failures do not affect readiness; only new or changed failures do.
7. Report — write .cheese/press/<slug>.md (slug carried from /cook, or derived from branch/task) and print the path. Mark readiness: ready for /age, follow-up recommended, or blocked.
8. Hand off — in manual mode, prompt the next step via the shared handoff gate (see ## Handoff below); in --auto mode, chain forward per ## Auto mode.

Preferred tools and fallbacks

Call source-code search, read, and edit backends directly according to code-intelligence-routing.md. For coverage and test discovery, use semantic caller search plus tilth_deps when available.

Portability reference: ../cheese/references/harness-portability.md. It covers helper resolution, sub-agent dispatch, GitHub operations, and handoff transitions; prefer the bundled or repo-local helper first, and treat ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR} as optional host-provided fallback. The handoff blocks below are the portable contract; slash commands are host renderings, not the control model.

Beyond source-code routing there are press-specific tools:

Need	Prefer	Fallback
Diff review	delta	plain git diff
Affected execution flows + risk scoring	semantic caller/dependency tracing and tilth_deps	manual flow tracing from changed files; note the precision loss

If optional tools are missing, press a narrower surface and state the residual risk.

Output

House style and citation form: ../cheese/references/formatting.md. This section owns the press-report shape.

Write to .cheese/press/<slug>.md with a minimum handoff slug at the top so /cook's fan pathway and /cheese --continue can chain without re-parsing the report. The full report shape:

status: ok | halt: <one-line reason>
next: press | age | done
artifact: <path-if-any>
baseline: none | <recorded baseline block copied from the cook handoff — see ../cook/references/quality-gates.md>
<one-line orientation: what press did — e.g., "added 4 boundary tests; no defects exposed">

# Press Report — <slug>

## Orientation
<one or two factual sentences about what press did this pass — the hardening added, the gaps closed, the readiness verdict. `/cheese --continue` surfaces the slug's orientation line to the user as "where you are", so press's orientation must describe press's own work, not duplicate cook's orientation.>

## Checks run
- <command>: <pass|fail|skipped with reason>

## Findings
| Severity | Category | Evidence | Recommendation |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |

## Coverage
- Spec coverage:
- Boundary coverage:
- Assertion strength:

## Readiness
<ready for /age | follow-up recommended | blocked>

## Next step
<ready for /age>:           /age <slug>           — review the cooked + pressed diff
<follow-up recommended>:    /age <slug>           — review-safe; documented follow-ups addressed after review
<blocked>:                  resolve blocking issues before proceeding

status: ok maps to readiness ready for /age or follow-up recommended; status: halt: <reason> maps to blocked. next: names the next runnable phase: age when review-safe, press when blocking issues must be resolved and the hardening phase rerun. Use next: done only for true terminal completion, not for a blocked-but-resumable halt. /ultracook still stops automatically on any status: halt; next: is the resume hint for /cheese --continue.

When baseline: is present, press honors it: identical recorded failures never move readiness off ready for /age; only new or changed failures do, per ../cook/references/quality-gates.md.

Then print:

Press report: .cheese/press/<slug>.md
Next step:    /age <slug>                          (when ready for /age or follow-up recommended)
              blocked — resolve before continuing  (when blocked)

Handoff

Pipeline: culture → mold → cook → [press] → age → cure → plate

After the press report is on disk, ask via the shared handoff gate in ../cheese/references/handoff-gate.md, following its Standard forward-step menu. Lead each option with the verb (what the user wants to do next); the skill command (with any in-scope --hard propagation) is the backing detail. Default options:

• Review the diff (recommended when readiness is ready for /age or follow-up recommended) — /age <slug>. For follow-up recommended, documented follow-ups can be addressed after review.
• Plate it — /age <slug> --auto --open-pr: run age → cure, then /plate resolves topology and publishes.
• Checkpoint & stop — /wheypoint: write a resumable handoff and pause.
• Stop — dispatch none; defer review (use this if you want to harden manually before /age, even though the contract is review-safe).

Pre-select Review the diff when ready. If blocked, do not pre-select Plate it. Run a non-stop selection immediately.

Auto mode

When invoked with --auto (propagated from /cook --auto):

• Skip the handoff gate entirely.
• If readiness is ready for /age or follow-up recommended, invoke /age <slug> --auto directly (forward --open-pr when it is in scope).
• If readiness is blocked, stop the auto chain and surface the press report to the user. Blocked criteria: defined once in references/gap-analysis.md.

Within cook's own fan pathway

When /cook's fan pathway (its retired-/ultracook mechanics, now self-hosted — see skills/cook/SKILL.md ## Fan pathway) spawns press as a fresh-context sub-agent, it owns the chain itself. When the spawn prompt explicitly says "for THIS PHASE ONLY" and "do not chain forward to the next phase," honour the override: write .cheese/press/<slug>.md (with the handoff slug at the top) and stop. Do not invoke /age <slug> --auto from inside the sub-agent regardless of readiness. The orchestrator reads the handoff slug and either chains to age (when status: ok and next: age) or halts (when status: halt, regardless of next:). next: remains the resume hint for /cheese --continue.

Rules

• Do not weaken assertions.
• Do not broaden implementation beyond the cooked contract.
• Every changed behaviour in the cooked diff leaves press with an executable hardening test that would fail if the change regressed. If press cannot produce a stable hardening test for a changed behaviour (flaky seam, missing infrastructure, design decision required), readiness is blocked — never ready for /age or follow-up recommended.
• Cap iteration at three attempts per gap. Count test-edit + run cycles. On the third failed cycle on the same gap, mark readiness blocked with reason spinning: <gap-description> and surface the report. Do not loop indefinitely.
• Surface medium and high findings explicitly; summarize low findings.
• If the cooked diff or spec rests on a false premise (the contract is wrong, or the test surface is solving the wrong problem), stop and surface the premise before adding tests; do not harden the wrong angle.
• Apply the shared voice kernel (lives at ../age/references/voice.md): lead the press report with the readiness verdict, flag residual risk as certain | speculating | don't know, agree when coverage is already sufficient without manufacturing tests.