Repo Harmonization

Repo Harmonization

If these instructions are already present in the conversation from a slash or dollar invocation, follow them directly; do not invoke this skill again through a skill tool.

Turn a list of interdependent repositories into verified alignment findings, user-approved decisions, and surgically implemented fixes.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS is a whitespace-separated list of repository paths. Tilde expansion is allowed.

• Resolve every supplied path before investigating its contents.
• Require at least two paths.
• Require each resolved path to exist and be a Git repository.
• Stop with a clear message identifying any missing, non-Git, or insufficient repository input.
• Do not infer additional repositories from links, remotes, or installed copies; the supplied list defines the audit boundary.

Contract

• Research before any edit and keep research strictly read-only; parallelize across subagents when the host supports them, otherwise investigate serially.
• Verify every alignment or duplication claim mechanically with a diff, content hash, regeneration round-trip, or symlink resolution; never rely on prose inspection alone, and attach file:line evidence to every finding.
• Classify each finding exactly once as confirmed drift to fix, true duplication that is a single-source candidate, or deliberate or necessary duplication to document without changing.
• Send judgment calls about deduplications to implement, competing workflows to retire, trim depth, and publish versus hold to the user before planning; never expand beyond the approved decisions.
• Treat the approved alignment outcome and resolved judgment calls, not the initial file manifest, as the implementation authorization boundary. When implementation discovers a related in-repository prerequisite needed to carry out those decisions, the orchestrator may extend the manifest, acquire coordination for the new scope, and delegate the smallest sufficient follow-on fix without asking again. Workers still stop at their assigned write scopes and return the evidence to the orchestrator.
• Prefer surgical fixes to restructuring; add no include pipeline, templating layer, shared reference, or other machinery unless it removes more complexity than it adds.
• Respect every repository's generation pipelines and hooks; edit canonical sources only, regenerate artifacts through build-only non-committing paths, and let designed commit hooks run at commit time.
• Keep implementation agents from committing or pushing; the orchestrator commits per repository, scopes commits to task files, and honors the host's coordination and shared-worktree rules.

Intake

• Resolve the supplied repository paths to stable absolute paths and retain their original user-facing forms for the report.
• Confirm the paths are distinct repositories rather than multiple spellings of the same resolved directory.
• Record the checked repository root for each path so later evidence is unambiguous.
• Snapshot git status --short in every repository before research.
• Treat pre-existing dirt as other agents' in-flight work: record it as a preservation boundary, never an audit target.
• Record the snapshot before running any command that might regenerate, install, or otherwise modify a worktree.
• Record each repository's current branch and remote configuration only when those facts affect an install, publish, or cross-repository reference.
• Build a first-pass link map before making conclusions.
• Treat the link map as an inventory, not proof that two files should share one source.
• Map symlinks that point between the listed repositories, including their resolved targets.
• Distinguish an intentional external symlink from a broken one by resolving it from its containing repository.
• Map files generated from another listed repository and identify the stated source when available.
• Record the generator command or manifest entry that establishes each generated relationship.
• Map install and publish flows that move artifacts, skills, packages, or configuration between the repositories.
• Note whether each flow changes files, creates external state, or merely validates a source artifact.
• Search AI-context files for references to the other listed repositories, including AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, README guidance, skills, and local instructions.
• Capture the concrete referenced path, command, or repository identifier rather than only its surrounding prose.
• Record unknown origins as unknown rather than assuming that path similarity establishes a relationship.

Research

• Partition the repositories or their independent subsystems across no more than three read-only investigators.
• If the host cannot run investigators, perform the same partitions serially without relaxing the evidence standard.
• Give each investigator a bounded path scope and require evidence, not proposed edits.
• Give every investigator the same repository boundary and pre-existing-dirt list.
• Map canonical-versus-generated relationships and the exact build pipelines that produce generated artifacts.
• Read build configuration and generator inputs before assigning canonical ownership to a file.
• Identify duplicated and near-duplicated instruction, documentation, and script content; cite both sides precisely.
• Test suspected duplication with normalized diffs or content hashes appropriate to the artifact format.
• Use byte comparison for exact copies and show the normalization used for near-duplicate claims.
• Identify drift, including stale paths, version mismatches, contradictory rules, and unpublished changes.
• Prove suspected drift against the relevant canonical source, live path, version source, or reproducible command.
• Attribute a stale reference to the referencing file and its target, not merely to a repository-wide search result.
• Identify competing workflows that accomplish the same job and describe their inputs, outputs, and side effects.
• Include the documented trigger and the actual canonical source each competing workflow consumes.
• Locate references to every other listed repository and determine whether each reference remains valid.
• Check local references independently from remote or published references when both forms exist.
• Keep generated artifacts distinct from their sources when grouping results.
• Fold all investigator results into one evidence-backed picture, preserving the provenance of every claim.
• Resolve disagreements by rerunning the mechanical check, not by selecting the more persuasive prose description.

Consolidate

• Deduplicate overlapping observations without discarding the strongest file:line and mechanical evidence.
• Keep linked but non-identical observations separate when they require different fixes or decisions.
• Do not classify an unverified suspicion; return it to research or record it as an open question.
• Regenerate suspected generated-copy drift through its build-only path and byte-verify the result with a diff.
• Preserve the generator's inputs and command output needed to reproduce the verification.
• Resolve symlinks and compare their targets before calling linked content duplicated or divergent.
• Mark duplication protected by design rules, such as self-contained artifacts or independently installed skills, as deliberate when the evidence supports that constraint.
• Treat a self-contained installation requirement as a design constraint even when its copies are byte-identical.
• Separate an objectively broken reference from a preference about how much duplicated context to retain.
• Keep a deliberate-no-change list with the mechanical evidence and design reason for each entry.

Decide

• Present confirmed drift separately from judgment calls; normally offer confirmed drift as an uncontroversial fix.
• Include the affected repositories and the exact mechanical evidence with each proposed fix.
• Present every judgment call as an explicit user question with a recommended option and its tradeoff.
• Keep alternatives mutually exclusive where a choice determines the next plan.
• Ask before choosing which single-source candidates to implement, which competing workflows to retire, how deeply to trim duplicated material, or whether to publish now or hold changes.
• State the default preservation option when no simplification is clearly justified.
• Do not write the implementation plan until the user resolves every decision that changes scope or approach.
• Record each user decision verbatim beside the finding it resolves.
• Preserve a decision's condition or exception when it limits an otherwise approved change.
• Carry declined changes into the deliberate-no-change list rather than silently omitting them.

Plan

• Produce a decision-complete plan that names exact files, canonical sources, and affected generated artifacts.
• Associate each edit with its finding and the user decision that authorized it.
• Order edits so canonical sources change before their generated or installed counterparts.
• Avoid editing installed output by hand unless it is itself a canonical artifact under the repository's rules.
• Name every regeneration command and whether it is build-only, non-committing, or expected to alter files.
• Identify commit-hook side effects and keep them distinct from build and regeneration steps.
• Specify per-repository verification, commit sequencing, publish sequencing, and any dependency between repositories.
• Identify the point at which a downstream repository can safely consume an upstream generated or installed artifact.
• In Claude Code, prefer plan mode.
• Delegate implementation through $codex-handoff when available; otherwise use host subagents, otherwise implement directly.
• Use disjoint per-repository write scopes for delegated work in every implementation shape.
• Reserve aggregate cross-repository validation for one owner so it runs once after dependent edits settle.
• Keep the plan limited to user-approved decisions. Extend it autonomously for technical prerequisites covered by those decisions; report and ask only when a new finding introduces a subjective consolidation choice, changes the repository set or intended outcome, or crosses an unapproved destructive, publish, or other external-write boundary.

Implement and finalize

• Reconcile each implementation-agent result against the visible working tree and its assigned write scope.
• Confirm every reported changed path belongs to the approved scope before treating an agent result as complete.
• Preserve pre-existing dirt and unrelated concurrent changes byte-for-byte.
• Run the narrowest per-repository checks that prove the intended edits.
• Run those checks from the repository whose rules and dependencies they exercise.
• Run cross-repository invariants once, including regeneration idempotence and source-versus-installed diffs where applicable.
• Attribute an aggregate failure before acting: first rule out effects of this task's changes, formatters, hooks, and generators, including downstream failures outside the approved files. Continue past a failure only when evidence establishes that it is unrelated and the task's own checks still pass.
• Use $commit when available after validation, passing only task files; never bypass it with git add -A, git commit -a, stash, or reset.
• Inspect each scoped commit before creating the next so an upstream commit remains independently reversible.
• Keep commits per repository so their histories, hooks, and publication states remain independently auditable.
• Rerun every required publish or install flow after its source changes.
• Do not publish an unvalidated source or an installed artifact that no longer matches its source.
• If publication is held by user decision, leave the validated source commit ready and report the required release step.

Report

• Report per-repository commit identifiers and the files each commit contains.
• Report every verification command and its outcome.
• Distinguish passed checks from checks that were intentionally not run and explain the latter.
• List deliberate no-change findings with the reasons they remain duplicated or unchanged.
• State residual risks, including unrun publish flows, unavailable regeneration tooling, and unresolved cross-repository references.
• State open questions that were deferred or discovered after the approved decision boundary.
• Keep the report auditable: link every conclusion back to its recorded finding, decision, or command outcome.