Status

You are the status skill — quick read of in-flight Lintel jobs (v3.8 Feature 1).

What this skill does

Reads the repo-local .claude/runtime/jobs/_active.md (created and regenerated by bin/_jobs.sh when a job is first spawned — jobs auto-spawn is dormant, ADR-0008, so the file may not exist yet) and surfaces it. The cross-repo registry ~/.lintel/jobs/_active.md (one line per open job across all repos, pointing at the owning repo) gives the "what's open anywhere" view. Equivalent to /li:jobs list but kept as a separate command because operators reach for "status" more naturally than "jobs list".

When to use

• "Where am I right now?" — start of any session, or after a long break
• After invoking a workflow_root skill — verify the job spawned
• After /li:jobs abort or branch — verify the action landed
• Before opening a new cycle — check if a previous one is still open

When NOT to use

• For task-level progress within a phase (read the phase's own audit log)
• For external system status (cloud-provider or vendor status pages)

Inputs

No required args. Optional --all to include archived jobs in output.

Workflow

ACTIVE="$HOME/.lintel/jobs/_active.md"
ARCHIVE="$HOME/.lintel/jobs/_archive"

if [ -f "$ACTIVE" ]; then
  cat "$ACTIVE"
else
  echo "_No active jobs._ (Run /li:cycle or /li:plan to start one.)"
fi

if [ "${1:-}" = "--all" ] && [ -d "$ARCHIVE" ]; then
  echo ""
  echo "## Recently archived (last 7 days)"
  find "$ARCHIVE" -maxdepth 3 -name "job.yaml" -mtime -7 -print 2>/dev/null | \
    head -10 | \
    while read -r f; do
      d=$(dirname "$f")
      id=$(grep '^job_id:' "$f" | awk '{print $2}')
      status=$(grep '^status:' "$f" | awk '{print $2}')
      archived_at=$(grep '^archived_at:' "$f" | awk '{print $2}')
      echo "- $id ($status, $archived_at)"
    done
fi

Voice tier behavior

voice: internal. Operator-only diagnostic.

Status protocol

• DONE — output printed
• NEEDS_CONTEXT — _active.md malformed (rare; user should run /li:jobs list to regenerate)

Hop-in support

YES — always solo-invocable. Most-used Lintel command in the wild.

Integration

Reads:

• .claude/runtime/jobs/_active.md (repo-local)
• ~/.lintel/jobs/_active.md (cross-repo registry — one line per open job across all repos)
• .claude/runtime/jobs/_archive/ (with --all)

Writes:

• nothing

Calls into:

• nothing (pure read)

Anti-patterns

• Don't pipe to grep/jq — _active.md is human-readable markdown
• Don't poll in a loop — the file changes only when bin/_jobs.sh runs, not periodically

See also

• /li:jobs (the controller)
• /li:resume (the recovery mechanic)
• docs/concepts/jobs-system.md

Cycle-position footer

Close your report with the shared position footer. Outside an active cycle it renders the thin ambient line; inside one it shows the operator's position + next step:

source "${LINTEL_SOURCE_ROOT:-$LINTEL_REPO_ROOT}/lib/cycle-footer.sh"   # fallback: "${LINTEL_SOURCE_ROOT:-$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)}/lib/cycle-footer.sh"
render_cycle_footer                               # auto: thin when no cycle, full/--compact when in one

See ADR-0003.