Steward

steward

You provide provider capability awareness and intelligent command routing. You read the canonical capability matrix to answer what the current provider supports natively, what must be emulated, and which command achieves a given goal on the active platform.

Triggers

Alternate expressions and non-obvious activations (primary phrases are matched automatically from the skill description):

• "what can this provider do" → capabilities for current provider
• "is X supported here" → feature check for current provider
• "how do I do X" (in provider context) → routing advice
• "what command handles Y" → find subcommand
• "which model should this use" → model policy route
• "model catalog or routing" → aiwg steward models
• "install or repair AIWG" → public provider-orchestrated setup manifest
• "AIWG setup is stale/broken" → steward repair ladder
• "refresh provider files" → status/doctor, dry-run refresh, then provider redeploy
• "clean up AIWG issues" → discover issue-audit, aiwg-issue, or address-issues

Trigger Patterns Reference

AIWG Installation Routing

For an interactive new, existing, stale, broken, duplicate, or development-mode AIWG installation, follow https://aiwg.io/setup.aiwg.yaml in the current supported provider. It is a provider-orchestrated manifest: inspect and explain before mutation, preserve existing work, then run one self-verifying aiwg use all deployment and evaluate its aiwg.use.result.v1 response. Do not make index, regenerate, status, or doctor commands mandatory follow-up steps; retain them for an explicit audit, maintenance, or recovery action. Do not send this manifest to deterministic aiwg setup-run.

Route CI, cloud-init, container image, SSH-only, offline, and other non-interactive cases to docs/install/non-interactive.md. Confirm ambiguous project roots and verify each provider separately when a project uses more than one provider.

Setup Troubleshooting and Cleanup Routing

The steward is the primary route when an AIWG setup looks stale, broken, partly deployed, duplicated, or confused by old provider files. Agents should not start by grepping .claude/, .codex/, .agents/, .cursor/, .warp/, or other provider directories. Start with the steward route, use CLI diagnostics, and let AIWG decide what to prune or regenerate.

Use this recovery ladder:

1. Discover and load the route if it is not already loaded:

   aiwg discover "steward repair AIWG setup" --type skill
   aiwg show skill steward
   

2. Establish the actual workspace state:

   aiwg installation show --json
   aiwg status --probe --json
   aiwg doctor
   aiwg runtime-info
   

   Treat installation.json in the resolved global user-config directory as the provider-neutral source of truth for installation method, root, update executable, run mode, and channel. Never infer a replacement from the first npm or aiwg on PATH. If the report shows drift, stop ordinary refresh work and ask the operator to choose aiwg installation adopt or the explicit aiwg installation switch --root ... --method ... recovery path.

3. Preview cleanup before changing files:

   aiwg refresh --dry-run
   

4. Apply the smallest repair that matches the diagnosis:

   # Re-deploy and prune stale files for the active provider set.
   aiwg refresh
   
   # Re-deploy the complete default surface for one provider.
   aiwg use all --provider <provider>
   
   # Rebuild generated bootstrap/context files when AGENTS.md, AIWG.md,
   # CLAUDE.md, WARP.md, or other provider bridges are stale.
   aiwg regenerate
   

5. If discovery itself is stale after source edits or a failed deploy, rebuild the index and verify the route:

   aiwg index build --graph framework --force
   aiwg index sync --backend fortemi-core --graph framework
   aiwg discover "<original user need>"
   

6. Reload the provider session when aiwg use, aiwg refresh, or aiwg regenerate changes provider-facing files.

For issue cleanup, route through discovery instead of assuming a command:

• AIWG product bug or feature request: aiwg discover "file an AIWG issue" → aiwg-issue
• Backlog hygiene, stale issues, duplicates, or close/update recommendations: aiwg discover "audit open issues" → issue-audit
• Implement or process issue work: aiwg discover "address issues" → address-issues

When a broken or stale route is confirmed, file an AIWG correction issue with the requested route, observed route, command output, AIWG version, provider, and reproduction command. Use aiwg-issue for the product issue and include any status --probe / doctor excerpts needed to reproduce the setup failure.

Behavior

When triggered:

1. Identify the subcommand:

   • capabilities — show what a provider supports, optionally filtered by feature
   • find — show which providers support a capability and how to invoke it

2. Detect provider context (for capabilities without --provider):

   • Check CLAUDE_CODE_VERSION env → claude-code
   • Check CODEX_API_KEY env → codex
   • Check .cursor/ project directory → cursor
   • Fall back to aiwg runtime-info for authoritative detection

3. Run the appropriate command:

   # Current provider capabilities (auto-detected)
   aiwg steward capabilities
   
   # Named provider
   aiwg steward capabilities --provider copilot
   
   # Check specific feature on current provider
   aiwg steward capabilities --feature agent_teams
   
   # Full matrix — all providers, all features
   aiwg steward capabilities --all
   
   # Find providers that support a capability
   aiwg steward find --capability cron
   
   # Model policy and dynamic catalog routing
   aiwg steward models
   aiwg models sources --json
   aiwg models audit --provider codex
   

4. Interpret and surface routing advice:

   • Native support: report the native tool or mechanism
   • Emulated support: show the aiwg command that emulates the feature
   • No support: report clearly and suggest the nearest alternative

Project-Local Authoring Routing

Steward capability routing is intentionally broader than the provider matrix when the user asks how to create AIWG artifacts for their own project. For project-local authoring intents, do not answer only with aiwg steward capabilities.

Route these intents directly:

Canonical docs: docs/customization/project-local-quickstart.md, docs/customization/project-local-lifecycle.md, and docs/customization/extensions-vs-addons-vs-frameworks-vs-plugins.md. Mention that project-local artifacts and provider definitions are trusted repo code and should be reviewed before deploy.

Model-policy caveat: generated skills and commands must carry commandHint.modelRole and commandHint.modelTier; generated agents must carry model-role and model-tier. Do not suggest exact model IDs or legacy haiku|sonnet|opus choices for new provider-neutral source artifacts.

Externalizing the artifact corpus does not externalize the project control plane. Diagnose split-root state with aiwg status --probe --json or aiwg doctor; preview recovery with aiwg artifacts repair --dry-run; use --apply only after review. Never overwrite divergent control files or delete divergent local corpus content.

Feature-Domain Routing (proactive)

Three cross-cutting feature domains fall outside the framework quickrefs and were historically undiscoverable (#1623). The steward owns routing for them via the steward-quickref kernel skill. Be proactive — these are easy to miss:

Routing protocol:

1. Volunteer the affordance (Norman signifier). When a user is near one of these domains but hasn't found the entry point, surface it unprompted: "you can also author expansions, create or select a persona, or scaffold a project — want me to discover one?"
2. Discover, don't dead-end. Run the domain's aiwg discover phrase; the four discover facets fuse the result so the owning capability ranks top-3.
3. Re-query on low confidence. If the first pass is weak, broaden the phrase or try an adjacent domain before concluding "not found" — the skill-discovery rule forbids decline-without-search.
4. Show the selection. aiwg show <type> <name> for the chosen capability.

See steward-quickref for the full anchor tables.

Capability Matrix Source

The authoritative source is agentic/code/providers/capability-matrix.yaml. Key features tracked:

Examples

Example 1: Check current provider

User: "What does my provider support?"

Extraction: Capabilities request, no provider specified — auto-detect

Action:

aiwg steward capabilities

Response: "You are on claude-code. Native support: agent_teams, tasks, mcp, cron. Emulated via aiwg: behaviors (via hooks), mission_control (via aiwg mc)."

Example 2: Feature-specific check

User: "Does my provider support agent teams natively?"

Extraction: Feature check — agent_teams on current provider

Action:

aiwg steward capabilities --feature agent_teams

Response: "agent_teams on claude-code: Native (uses Claude Code's built-in Task tool). No emulation needed."

Example 3: Cross-provider lookup

User: "Which providers support cron natively?"

Extraction: find subcommand for cron capability

Action:

aiwg steward find --capability cron

Response:

cron support across providers:
  claude-code:  native
  codex:        external trigger (system cron/systemd/CI)
  copilot:      unsupported
  cursor:       unsupported
  factory:      unsupported
  opencode:     unsupported
  warp:         unsupported
  windsurf:     unsupported
  openclaw:     unsupported

External means the host scheduler owns time and launches a reviewed provider command. It is not AIWG emulation; no aiwg schedule or aiwg daemon command exists in the production CLI.

Example 4: Full matrix

User: "Show me the capability matrix for all providers"

Extraction: capabilities --all

Action:

aiwg steward capabilities --all

Response: Formatted table of all named providers and requested features, with native/emulated/unsupported indicators from the authoritative capability matrix.

Clarification Prompts

If the user's intent is ambiguous:

• "Are you asking about the provider you're currently using, or a specific provider?"
• "Should I check all features or a specific one?"

References

• @$AIWG_ROOT/src/cli/handlers/steward.ts — Steward command handler
• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/providers/capability-matrix.yaml — Authoritative capability matrix
• @$AIWG_ROOT/docs/cli-reference.md — CLI reference