Claim Safety

Claim safety — claim, then prove you own the lease

Chain: once you have PROVEN the lease (forge issue owns <id> exits 0), continue to dev to work the issue (smith proceeds into plan/dev after this proof). Usable standalone whenever ownership is in question.

Claiming is not owning. The Forge kernel keys a claim's idempotency on claim.create:<issue_id>:<actor>, so a same-key duplicate replay returns ok:true echoing the current call's claim_id. A genuine cross-actor conflict returns ok:false (the partial-UNIQUE active-lease index guarantees one lease) — but ok:true alone does not prove sole ownership. A live lease can also be reclaimed on expiry (an expired lease is superseded by the next claimant). Therefore every worker MUST verify ownership before mutating a claimed issue, and RE-verify before close/release.

This is a reusable, standalone procedure: any skill or agent that mutates a claimed issue embeds it (it is NOT folded into one orchestrator).

The verification primitive

forge issue owns <id>          # exit 0 iff YOU hold the live lease; non-zero otherwise
forge issue owns <id> --json   # { ok:true, data:{ owned, claimed_by, expired, actor, expires_at } }

owns resolves your actor the same way the kernel does — FORGE_ACTOR → FORGE_SESSION_ID → default forge — then reports owned:true iff you hold the single active claim AND that lease has not expired. It exits 0 when you own it and non-zero (conflict, code 4) when you do not, with a clear "you do not own the lease for <id> (held by <actor>)" message. It is a strict READ — it never mutates kernel state. (data.claimed_by is lease-derived; there is no claims command.)

Procedure

1. Select work — forge issue ready --json (see the triage-ready skill). Never claim epics/decisions or defer-windowed items.
2. Claim — FORGE_ACTOR=<your-actor> forge claim <id>. Always run under a distinct actor so a losing claim reaches the conflict guard instead of collapsing to a shared-actor duplicate.
3. Prove ownership BEFORE working — forge issue owns <id>.
   • exit 0 (OWNED) → the lease is yours; proceed to work.
   • non-zero (NOT OWNED) → you lost the race, or your claim collapsed to a foreign/duplicate-collapsed claim. Do NOT work the issue. Reselect via forge issue ready --json and start over at step 1.
4. Work the issue (dev/edit/etc.).
5. RE-verify before close/release — a live lease can be reclaimed on expiry while you worked. Run forge issue owns <id> again:
   • OWNED → forge release check --target <release-ref> --json (release-readiness; omit --target to use the project default), then forge close <id> --reason "…" or forge release <id>.
   • NOT OWNED → the lease was reclaimed (likely expired). Do NOT close/ release someone else's lease; reselect and, if the work is still needed, re-claim and reconcile.

Contract (what each result means)

Fork points

• Actor source — how <your-actor> is derived (FORGE_ACTOR explicit id → FORGE_SESSION_ID → default forge). Use a distinct per-agent actor so contending claims reach the conflict guard rather than collapsing to a duplicate.
• Expiry / lease TTL — whether claims carry an expires_at and how long; owns treats an expired lease as NOT owned (it can be reclaimed).
• Re-verify cadence — verify after claim and again before close/release; a longer task may re-verify more often (e.g. before each irreversible step).
• Reselection policy — on NOT-OWNED, how the next item is chosen (ranking / filters live in the triage-ready skill).
• Fail-closed posture — with no usable clock/state, treat ownership as NOT proven (mirror the readiness model's "no usable clock ⇒ not workable").

Reliability notes

• A genuine cross-actor conflict returns ok:false — there is no phantom ok:true-on-conflict. The real hazards are (a) a duplicate replay's ok:true and (b) expiry-driven reclaim. owns closes both.
• Full multi-agent safety depends on the actor-identity kernel fix (distinct actors per agent, kernel d71a824b): without distinct actors, two agents share one idempotency key and owns cannot tell them apart.