Init

init

The onboarding front door for an SDD project — the place a repo opts into SDD's optional, repo-scoped conveniences. Unlike sdd:sdd (the gateway) and sdd:manage (thin classifiers that write no repo files), init is a setup skill: it writes operational config, never spec/contract state. It opens no CR and invokes no gate.

sdd:manage's Setup & discovery group loads this skill for a bare "set up / configure the statusline" request.

v1 capability — the mission statusline

While a mission runs, the conductor (start-mission) overwrites .agents/sdd/statusline with the current phase on each transition and clears it on every exit. This skill wires the reader: a Claude Code statusLine command in project .claude/settings.json that renders that file. It never writes or clears the runtime value itself — only the conductor does.

1. Offer, and ask consent

Ask the user whether to enable the mission statusline. On decline, write nothing — no settings change, no .gitignore entry — and stop.

2. Ask the display mode

On enable, ask whether the mission status should render:

• own-line — its own row, beneath any existing status line output
• same-line — appended to the end of the existing status line output

3. Detect a global statusline

Before wiring, run the read-only detection — Claude Code's project statusLine replaces the global one (no merge), so a fresh project wiring would silently shadow a status line living in ~/.claude/settings.json:

node "<skill>/scripts/wire-statusline.mts" --root . --detect

It reports the project statusLine (absent | wired | foreign), the global statusLine (present | absent), and the shadow risk. On a shadow risk (project absent, global present), tell the user wiring will shadow their global status line and ask:

• compose it (default) — the global command is wrapped as the base, the piped status input flows through to it, and the global line keeps rendering. Warn when project .claude/settings.json is committed: composing copies the global command text into it, which may be machine-specific.
• shadow it — wire with no base (pass --no-global-base below).

No shadow risk → proceed straight to wiring.

4. Wire the reader

Run the engine to compose the reader into project settings and (in a git repo) gitignore the status file:

node "<skill>/scripts/wire-statusline.mts" --root . --wire --mode own-line
node "<skill>/scripts/wire-statusline.mts" --root . --wire --mode same-line   # add --no-global-base to shadow deliberately

The engine:

• writes only .claude/settings.json and, only in a git repo, .gitignore — the global ~/.claude/settings.json is read for detection only, never written
• composes, never stomps: an existing project statusLine command's output is preserved as the wrapped base; the SDD segment is added around it (a new row for own-line, an appended segment for same-line). No project command → a fresh wire wraps the detected global command as the base by default (--no-global-base opts out); no command anywhere → it creates one.
• a project statusLine always wins as the base; re-running recovers the base from the wired command and never re-consults the global settings; a malformed global settings file counts as no global statusLine
• the wired command reads .agents/sdd/statusline and falls through to nothing beyond the composed base when the file is absent — no heartbeat, no polling, just a read
• adds .agents/sdd/statusline to .gitignore idempotently when the folder is a git repo; skips when it is not
• is idempotent: re-running (same or a different mode) rewrites the one managed block, never stacking a second SDD segment or duplicating the gitignore line

When node is absent, an agent performs the same edit by hand: read .claude/settings.json, wrap any existing project statusLine.command as a POSIX sh subshell base — when the project defines none, read ~/.claude/settings.json (read-only) and, with the user's consent from step 3, wrap its statusLine.command as the base instead — append the mode-specific read-and-render logic for .agents/sdd/statusline, and add the gitignore line when the folder is a git repo — never touch the global settings file.

Report

State whether the statusline was enabled or declined, the chosen mode (if enabled), whether a global statusline was detected and composed as the base (or deliberately shadowed), and whether the gitignore entry was added, already present, or skipped (not a git repo).

Boundaries

Writes only operational config (.claude/settings.json, .gitignore) — never a spec.md, status, approval, or freeze. Opens no CR, invokes no gate. Never wires the global settings file — SDD is repo-scoped, a user's global status line is theirs; the global file is read only to detect a statusLine to compose against, never written. Does not move scaffold-project-spec / manage-spec-anchors / manage-ignore into itself. Never writes or clears the statusline value — that is the conductor's during the mission loop.