Night Watch

Night Watch Command

Triggers the autonomous maintenance agent.

Usage

/night-watch [scope]
# Example: /night-watch deps
# Example: /night-watch cleanup
# Default: runs full suite

Protocol

1. Checkout: Create maintenance/ branch.
2. Execute: Run night-watchman agent skills.
3. Verify: Run full test suite.
4. Report: Generate Shift Report.

Rules

• MUST work on a dedicated maintenance/ branch — never commit to main or the user's active branch
• NEVER push without the full test suite passing
• CRITICAL: stop on the first failing test and surface it — do not try to "fix" tests opportunistically
• MANDATORY: every change lands in a discrete commit with a conventional message

Gotchas

• npm audit fix bumps to the latest major version when --force is set — quietly introducing breaking changes. Always use plain npm audit fix first and only escalate to --force after the user approves each named package.
• pip install --upgrade without a constraints file resolves differently each run due to transitive dependencies. Pin via pip-compile and commit the lockfile, otherwise maintenance runs produce "mysterious" unrelated changes.
• git add -A on a maintenance run can pull in build artifacts and IDE caches if .gitignore is incomplete. Prefer explicit git add <path> per change category (deps, docs, lint-fixes) to keep commits attributable.
• Pre-commit hooks that format on commit may re-modify files AFTER your edit — the resulting commit may differ from the planned diff. Run the formatter as a separate step and verify git diff --staged before committing.

When NOT to Use

• For planned refactors with a known scope — use /refactor-plan
• For immediate bug fixes — use /fix or /debug
• In a repo the user is actively working in — wait for idle time
• When there are uncommitted changes on the current branch — abort until clean