# Stuck Crewmate Recovery

> Agent-only playbook for stuck firstmate direct reports. Use after a stale wake, looping pane, repeated confusion, an answered-by-brief question, an unresponsive crewmate, or a failed steer. Escalates from peek, to one-line steer, to harness-specific interrupt, to relaunch with progress, to failed status.

- Skill: `arogyareddy/stuck-crewmate-recovery` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add arogyareddy/stuck-crewmate-recovery`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/arogyareddy/stuck-crewmate-recovery/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: AI & ML
- Author: arogyareddy (https://skillmd.com/u/arogyareddy)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/arogyareddy/stuck-crewmate-recovery

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# stuck-crewmate-recovery

Use this playbook when a direct report is stale, looping, repeatedly confused, asking a question its brief already answers, unresponsive, or when a steer failed to land.

Load `harness-adapters` before sending an interrupt, exit command, resume command, or harness-specific skill invocation.
The target window's harness is recorded as `harness=` in `state/<id>.meta`.

Escalate in order:

1. Peek the pane.
2. If the crewmate is waiting on a question its brief already answers, answer in one line via `FM_HOME=<this-firstmate-home> bin/fm-send.sh` from an active firstmate session unless `FM_HOME` is already set to the active firstmate home.
3. If the crewmate is confused or looping, interrupt with the adapter's interrupt key, then redirect with one corrective line.
   For example, for a single-Escape adapter: `FM_HOME=<this-firstmate-home> bin/fm-send.sh <window> --key Escape`.
4. If the crewmate is genuinely wedged after redirection, exit the agent with the adapter's exit command and relaunch with the same brief plus a `progress so far` note appended to it.
   Genuine wedging means looping, unresponsive, repeating the same obstacle, or truly dead.
   A low context reading is not wedging; modern harnesses auto-compact and keep going.
   The worktree and commits persist, so relaunch is cheap.
5. If a second relaunch fails too, write `failed` to the backlog and tell the captain with evidence.