Powershell Orchestration State Machine

PowerShell Orchestration State Machine

Canonical checkpoint and resume behavior for orchestration agents running multi-step PowerShell delivery flows.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• A workflow spans multiple delegations and commands.
• Execution may be interrupted and must resume deterministically.
• An orchestrator must avoid repeating completed steps.

Canonical Checkpoint Location

• artifacts/orchestration/powershell-orchestrator-state.json

Never create sidecar checkpoint files, suffixed variants, or backup files as active state. If checkpoint state is conflicted, stale, or belongs to another mission, stop and report the conflict instead of renaming or backing up the active checkpoint.

Required Checkpoint Fields

• objective
• change_budget_estimate
• path_selected (small or large)
• promotion-type
• short-name
• relativeFile
• long-name
• issue-num
• feature-folder
• work-mode (minor-audit, full-feature, or full-bug; normalize legacy full to full-feature before persistence)
• plan-path (minimal or full plan path)
• completed_steps
• next_step
• last_updated

For short-path runs, also persist:

• small_path_qc_summary
• small_path_audit_artifacts
• bootstrap_mode (manual-bootstrap or auto-small-dev)
• phase0_execution_summary
• resume_after_manual_bootstrap (next step token)

Update Protocol

• Write checkpoint after every completed orchestration sub-step.
• Treat checkpoint as source-of-truth for progress state.
• Never claim mission completion until checkpoint marks final state.

Resume Protocol

On invocation:

1. Read checkpoint if it exists.
2. If incomplete, resume from next_step without re-running completed_steps.
3. If missing or completed, start at phase-0 intake.
4. If user explicitly requests restart, reset checkpoint and start phase-0.