Ship Preflight

ship-preflight (Stage ⑤.a)

Overview

The machine-checkable "PR ready != release ready" gate. Runs the harnessed-native harnessed release-preflight command, which inspects (read-only) whether the repo is ready to tag a release:

Process

1. Run harnessed release-preflight.
2. If any check fails, STOP — surface the fix: hints and do not proceed to PR/tag.
   • Empty [Unreleased] is the most common failure: document the release first.
3. If all pass, the repo is tag-ready. The ship master continues to PR/deploy.

Boundary

This gate is READ-ONLY. It never pushes, publishes, or creates a tag. The actual npm publish + GitHub release happen in publish.yml CI when a v<version> tag is pushed (with explicit user approval).

How to invoke

!harnessed checkpoint intent ship-preflight

The banner above (when present) means this invocation is REGISTERED with the engine (an intent marker) — not yet compliant: the steps below (prompt → spawn → checkpoint complete) resolve it, and a per-turn <workflow-intent> reminder persists until they run.

The numbered sequence below is the state machine — execute it with Bash. Do NOT improvise an equivalent flow from the Overview above: freelancing bypasses the engine (no ledger, no evidence guard). harnessed gives you the spawn-ready prompt; YOU spawn the subagent with a CC-native Task / Agent tool (keeps the session responsive + lets clarification round-trips reach the user).

Do NOT pipe to harnessed run ship-preflight — that is the CI/headless path (in-process SDK spawn that blocks the session inside Claude Code).

1. Bash: harnessed prompt ship-preflight --task "$ARGUMENTS" --json → parse {prompt, max_iterations, model}.
2. 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 ship-preflight --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 ship-preflight --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.
3. If the output contains STATUS: NEEDS_CLARIFICATION + a question list: STOP, relay them verbatim via AskUserQuestion, append the answers to the spec, then re-spawn the same sub.
4. On <promise>COMPLETE</promise>: write the subagent’s final output to a file, then Bash harnessed checkpoint complete ship-preflight --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. --force records an audited override (evidence_status=overridden) — it does not silently pass.
5. If the complete gate blocked: Bash harnessed checkpoint fail ship-preflight --failing-tests <n> to record the attempt. It prints BUDGET-EXHAUSTED / NO-PROGRESS / BREAK-LOOP once 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.