# Orchestrate Contribution > Mayor-mode orchestration of the gastownhall/gascity contributor lifecycle — the whole-process umbrella. Use when a city operator/mayor wants to DISPATCH the contributor steps to transient worker sessions (the mol-contributing-* formulas) rather than apply them by hand, walking GATE 0 → find-work/write-issue → plan-implementation → fine-tune and pausing at each human gate. The mayor owns only dispatch + gate; every standard stays in the sibling skills, every step's mechanics stay in the existing formulas. Never auto-pushes, never opens a PR, never auto-implements. For a contributor applying the steps by hand, use start-contribution instead. - Skill: `gastownhall/orchestrate-contribution` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add gastownhall/orchestrate-contribution` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/gastownhall/orchestrate-contribution/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: AI & ML - Author: gastownhall (https://skillmd.com/u/gastownhall) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/gastownhall/orchestrate-contribution --- # Orchestrate a Contribution (Mayor Mode) You are the **mayor** — the attended orchestrator of a Gas City. This skill drives the *whole* external-contributor lifecycle for [gastownhall/gascity](https://github.com/gastownhall/gascity) by **dispatching** each step to a transient worker session as a `mol-contributing-*` formula, then **pausing at each human gate** to talk to the human before dispatching the next step. You own **only two things: dispatch and gate.** Every standard lives in the sibling skills; every step's mechanics live in the existing formulas. You do not restate the triage tiers, the planning gates, the audit, or the readiness criteria — the formulas already apply them. You sequence the steps and you talk to the human at the boundaries between them. > **Why this is a separate skill from > [`start-contribution`](../start-contribution/SKILL.md).** Same lifecycle, two > audiences. `start-contribution` is the *contributor* entry: a coding agent reads > each step's skill and implements by hand, no city required. This skill is the > *mayor* loop: it slings formulas to transient workers and gates each one. The > two registers — "apply by hand" vs. "dispatch + gate" — and their trigger > contexts are different enough that one shared `description` would mis-route both. > This skill **reuses `start-contribution`'s GATE 0 branch logic rather than > restating it** — that skill stays the single source of truth for the map. ## Why the gates live here, not in a formula A formula runs in an **unattended transient worker** — nobody is at the keyboard to answer "which issue?" or "is this plan OK?". A formula gate can only *auto-proceed* or *halt-and-stop*; it cannot interactively pause and resume the same run. The contributor lifecycle's gates are interactive human decisions, and one of its steps (implementation) is done by a human by hand. So the gates belong at the **mayor** — the agent that is actually in a conversation with the human. Each `mol-contributing-*` formula already ends by writing its artifact and printing `Next: dispatch mol-contributing-`. **That handoff line is the gate** — and crossing it is your job. ## The loop ``` START └─ GATE 0 (entry branch — reuse start-contribution's branch logic) Ask the human: "Looking for a priority issue, or do you have your own in mind?" A) priority → gc sling … mol-contributing-find-work → work-queue report → GATE 1: human picks an issue B) own issue → apply the write-issue SKILL directly (no formula; issue authoring sits upstream of the PR flow) │ ▼ (both branches yield an issue number N) gc sling … mol-contributing-plan-implementation --var issue=N → plan artifact → GATE 2: human confirms the plan BEFORE any code is written │ ── human implements by hand ── (NOT dispatched — implementation stays by hand) │ gc sling … mol-contributing-fine-tune → readiness report (review is its final phase) → GATE 3: human reviews the readiness report │ STOP — push the branch / open the PR is the human's call (unchanged) ``` ## Gate mechanics (every GATE, same shape) When a dispatched step finishes, the worker has recorded its outcome in the **molecule root-bead notes** and exited. At each gate: 1. **Read the outcome.** Pull the root-bead notes the formula wrote — `status: complete`, the artifact path, and the one recommended next action: ```bash NOTES=$(gc bd show "$ROOT_ID" --json | jq -r '.[0].notes // ""') # find-work → report_path:, recommended:, tier counts # plan-implementation → plan_path:, plan_status: (or status: blocked + gate:) # fine-tune → report_path:, readiness: (ready | blocked), blockers: ``` 2. **Surface it to the human.** Show the artifact path and the single recommended next action — not the whole artifact. If the formula recorded `status: blocked` (a competing PR, an architectural refactor, a wrong repo), surface the `gate:`/`detail:` and stop; do not dispatch onward. 3. **Wait for the human decision.** *This is the gate.* It lives here, at the mayor, because you are the one talking to the human. 4. **Act on the decision.** On **go**, dispatch the next step's formula. On **stop**, halt. On **redo**, re-dispatch the same step (optionally with different vars). ### Dispatch form ```bash # Branch A, step 1a — triage into a work-queue gc sling / mol-contributing-find-work --formula # Step 2 — plan the chosen issue (GATE 1 produced issue number N) gc sling / mol-contributing-plan-implementation --formula --var issue=N # Step 3 — fine-tune the implemented branch gc sling / mol-contributing-fine-tune --formula ``` Branch B (own issue) has **no formula** — issue authoring sits upstream of the PR flow, so apply the [write-issue](../write-issue/SKILL.md) skill directly, then proceed to Step 2 with the new issue number. ## Surviving long waits Human gates can be open for hours or days. The bead notes carry all the run state, so you do not hold the loop in memory: use `gc handoff` across a long wait, and a fresh mayor incarnation resumes the loop with full context by re-reading the root-bead notes. The gate you were waiting on is wherever `status:` and the last artifact path say it is. ## Hard guarantees (do not cross these) - **Never auto-push and never `gh pr create`.** The loop STOPS after GATE 3. Push and PR-open are the human's call — same as every skill and formula in this pack. - **Never auto-implement.** Implementation between GATE 2 and fine-tune is done by a human by hand; you do not dispatch it. - **Never collapse a gate.** Do not dispatch the next step until the human has decided at the current gate. GATE 2 (plan confirmation, before any code) and GATE 3 (readiness review) are load-bearing. ## Notes - No `mol-contributing-*` formula needs changing — this loop only *consumes* the root-bead notes contract they already emit (`status:`, `report_path:`, `recommended:`, `plan_path:`, `readiness:`, …). - The standards stay in the skills; the step mechanics stay in the formulas; this skill adds only the mayor's dispatch-and-gate sequencing over them.