Ship

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.

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. 1b. Bash: harnessed facts ship --out .harnessed-facts.json → it lists ONLY the facts this stage’s gates actually read: deterministic ones already filled (change size / files touched / stage, from git), judgement calls left null with a one-line hint of what to judge. Edit the file and replace each null in facts with your honest answer from the locked spec — leave one null only if you genuinely cannot judge it (it then falls back to the built-in default). Do NOT skip this step and do NOT invent facts the command did not ask for.
2. Bash: harnessed gates ship --task "<locked spec>" --context-file .harnessed-facts.json --skip-sub discuss → 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. There is NO create step and no create tool — spawn one background teammate per fired sub with Agent(name: <sub>, run_in_background: true, prompt: <that sub's harnessed prompt prompt>) and the team forms implicitly on the FIRST spawn, with this session as lead (the team_name input is accepted but ignored — the name is session-derived). Coordinate via SendMessage; when a sub is finished, ask that teammate to shut down BY NAME (e.g. "ask the verify-qa teammate to shut down"). 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 facts <sub> --out .harnessed-facts.json (fill the nulls) → harnessed gates <sub> --task "<spec>" --context-file .harnessed-facts.json --skip-sub discuss → 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 and model, then drive delivery with harnessed's own completion gate:
     • on return, write the subagent's final output to a file and run harnessed checkpoint complete <sub> --result-file <path> — it is fail-closed on the declared artifacts, the TDD boundary, and the verbatim <promise>COMPLETE</promise>.
     • if it blocks, run harnessed checkpoint fail <sub> --failing-tests <n> to record the attempt; it prints BUDGET-EXHAUSTED / NO-PROGRESS / BREAK-LOOP when a stop condition is reached.
     • respawn ONLY while none of those three has fired. Any one of them means stop: re-scope the subtask, fix the blocker, or escalate to the user. Never respawn past a stop directive. 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>: write the subagent’s final output to a file, then Bash harnessed checkpoint complete <sub> --result-file <path> --summary "<one-line>". Fail-CLOSED — it blocks unless every declared artifacts_expected file exists, the TDD boundary passes (non-empty evidence / both the red and green sides present / the test file was not deleted), and the result carries a verbatim <promise>COMPLETE</promise> (or a structured COMPLETE status). --result <text> is the inline variant; --result-file wins and is quoting-safe on Windows. On a non-zero exit the sub is NOT done — re-spawn to close the gap, or pass --force only to deliberately override (records evidence_status=overridden, an audited override rather than a silent pass). e. If the complete gate blocked: Bash harnessed checkpoint fail <sub> --failing-tests <n> to record the attempt (omit the flag when the sub has no tests — the evidence-artifact digest is the fallback progress metric). It prints BUDGET-EXHAUSTED (attempts spent vs workflows/defaults.yaml ralph_max_iterations), NO-PROGRESS (no improvement for N consecutive attempts) or BREAK-LOOP (this sub failed >= the threshold) once a stop condition is reached. Respawn ONLY while none of those three has fired; any one of them means STOP — re-scope, fix the blocker, or escalate to the user, and report it.
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.