How do I install the Ship And Watch skill?

Run npx skillmds@latest add harshanandak/ship-and-watch in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.

Is Ship And Watch safe to use?

This skill has not completed SkillMD's automated safety review yet. SkillMD never runs a skill's scripts for you; review the SKILL.md before installing.

Which AI agents work with Ship And Watch?

This skill is tagged as working with Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex. SKILL.md is an open format, so most agents that read a skills directory can load it too.

Is Ship And Watch free to use?

Yes. Installing skills from SkillMD is free, and the skill stays under its author's original license.

Who published Ship And Watch?

harshanandak (@harshanandak) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.

Ship And Watch by harshanandak — Agent Skill

Name: Ship And Watch
Author: harshanandak

Ship And Watch

Use after pushing a Forge branch, opening a PR, or when asked "is the PR ready / what's the status / are checks green" — reads shepherd verdicts instead of polling GitHub. Do not use to merge a PR, and do not use to resolve review threads; both stay with the human and /review.

harshanandak Updated Sep 17, 2026

File contents

ship-and-watch

The monitor is already running. Your job is to read it, not to start it and not to replace it.

Why this exists

The single most repeated correction in this repo is an agent shipping a PR and then hand-polling gh pr checks in a loop — burning tokens, missing the verdict, and leaving the PR unwatched the moment the session ends. [Forge #1 ×10]

Harsha's rule, in his words: "shepard should do everything independtly thats teh idea it shouldntbe invoked" and "whenever we ship an automatic pr monitor should be created to work on all fixes until iut gets merghe ready". A monitor you must remember to start has no value.

What is already true

Forge wakes the repo-singleton shepherd daemon automatically after a supported session start, after every successful push, and after every successful non-dry-run ship. Duplicate starts are clean no-ops under the O_EXCL lease. [verified 2026-08-13 — AGENTS.md, /shepherd utility section]

So: you do not start the daemon. You confirm it is attached and read what it says.

Procedure

Ship or push normally — forge ship, or forge push on a branch that has an open PR.
Confirm the daemon owns this PR:
```
forge shepherd events
```
Read the verdict for your PR:
```
forge shepherd <pr> --pull --json
```
Report the verdict in one line: what is red, what is pending, what needs a human. If nothing is red, say so explicitly and name what you checked — a silent "looks fine" reads as "did not look".

Rules

Never hand-poll. gh pr checks in a loop is the failure this skill replaces. The one legitimate use of gh here is a single spot-check when the daemon reports something you want to confirm at source. [Forge #1 ×10]
Never merge. Shepherd never merges and never resolves review threads; neither do you. The human merges. [verified 2026-08-13 — AGENTS.md]
New problems get a new PR. A finding unrelated to this branch becomes a kernel issue and its own PR, never an extra commit here. "new problems not related to pr should be menat to be fixed ina new pr." [Forge #3 ×6]
Do not wait a fixed ten minutes. Wait for the settled state: every bot has posted a terminal result, zero unresolved threads, no check in flight. A clock is not a signal. [Forge #10 ×2]
If the daemon is genuinely not attached, that is a bug in the substrate — file a kernel issue. Do not paper over it with a manual loop.

Kill switches (know them, do not reach for them)

FORGE_SHEPHERD_DISABLE, or forge gate disable rail.auto_shepherd. Disabling the monitor to make a run quieter is the same class of mistake as weakening a test to make it pass. [Forge #9 ×3]

Done when

You have stated the current verdict for the PR, named the source you read it from, and either handed off to the human for merge or filed the follow-up issue.

---name: ship-and-watchdescription: Use after pushing a Forge branch, opening a PR, or when asked "is the PR ready / what's the status / are checks green" — reads shepherd verdicts instead of polling GitHub. Do not use to merge a PR, and do not use to resolve review threads; both stay with the human and /review.---# ship-and-watchThe monitor is already running. Your job is to read it, not to start it and notto replace it.## Why this existsThe single most repeated correction in this repo is an agent shipping a PR andthen hand-polling `gh pr checks` in a loop — burning tokens, missing theverdict, and leaving the PR unwatched the moment the session ends.[Forge #1 ×10]Harsha's rule, in his words: *"shepard should do everything independtly thatsteh idea it shouldntbe invoked"* and *"whenever we ship an automatic pr monitorshould be created to work on all fixes until iut gets merghe ready"*.A monitor you must remember to start has no value.## What is already trueForge wakes the repo-singleton shepherd daemon automatically after a supportedsession start, after every successful push, and after every successfulnon-dry-run ship. Duplicate starts are clean no-ops under the O_EXCL lease.[verified 2026-08-13 — AGENTS.md, `/shepherd` utility section]So: **you do not start the daemon.** You confirm it is attached and read what itsays.## Procedure1. Ship or push normally — `forge ship`, or `forge push` on a branch that has an open PR.2. Confirm the daemon owns this PR: ```bash forge shepherd events ```3. Read the verdict for your PR: ```bash forge shepherd <pr> --pull --json ```4. Report the verdict in one line: what is red, what is pending, what needs a human. If nothing is red, say so explicitly and name what you checked — a silent "looks fine" reads as "did not look".## Rules- **Never hand-poll.** `gh pr checks` in a loop is the failure this skill replaces. The one legitimate use of `gh` here is a single spot-check when the daemon reports something you want to confirm at source. [Forge #1 ×10]- **Never merge.** Shepherd never merges and never resolves review threads; neither do you. The human merges. [verified 2026-08-13 — AGENTS.md]- **New problems get a new PR.** A finding unrelated to this branch becomes a kernel issue and its own PR, never an extra commit here. *"new problems not related to pr should be menat to be fixed ina new pr."* [Forge #3 ×6]- **Do not wait a fixed ten minutes.** Wait for the settled state: every bot has posted a terminal result, zero unresolved threads, no check in flight. A clock is not a signal. [Forge #10 ×2]- If the daemon is genuinely not attached, that is a bug in the substrate — file a kernel issue. Do not paper over it with a manual loop.## Kill switches (know them, do not reach for them)`FORGE_SHEPHERD_DISABLE`, or `forge gate disable rail.auto_shepherd`.Disabling the monitor to make a run quieter is the same class of mistake asweakening a test to make it pass. [Forge #9 ×3]## Done whenYou have stated the current verdict for the PR, named the source you read itfrom, and either handed off to the human for merge or filed the follow-up issue.

Frequently asked questions