Autopilot

Autopilot

Turn a single trigger into an end-to-end autonomous run: from a raw prompt (or any partial artifact) to one open MVP pull request, with no per-question stops and exactly one human checkpoint at the crystallized Idea. Autopilot is a thin orchestrator — it drives the existing ideate → specify → plan → implement → pull-request skills, arms the run-scoped autonomy signal defined in autonomy-autopilot.md, and hands back the trail. It owns orchestration, the Idea checkpoint, the publish ceiling, and the handback — nothing else.

Hard Gate

If a stage's quality gate returns Issues Found, or an anomaly halts implement, autopilot STOPS and hands back the blocker — it never releases a quality gate to keep moving.

When to Use

• The user says "do it autonomously", /autopilot, /autopilot <slug>, or appends "autonomously" to any pipeline request — even on the very first prompt, before any artifact exists.
• The user wants to reach an MVP without answering per-stage clarifying questions or approving each gate, accepting one Idea checkpoint and a decision log they review afterward.

Refuse only when the input is a genuinely empty ask — no prompt and no resolvable artifact to act on.

Entry-Point Detection

Autopilot has no fixed precondition — it starts wherever the work currently is. Resolve the furthest-along existing artifact for the work, then run every remaining stage:

Resolution steps:

1. If the trigger names a slug (/autopilot <slug>), resolve that artifact; otherwise infer the work from the prompt and scan spec/ideas/, spec/features/, spec/plans/ for a matching in-flight artifact.
2. Pick the furthest-along artifact in the pipeline order idea < feature < plan. Enter at the stage that produces the next artifact.
3. The trigger phrase is the consent to auto-create and auto-approve every artifact the run produces (subject only to the confirm_idea checkpoint). There is no separate "must be an approved Idea first" gate.
4. If nothing resolves and there is no prompt to ideate from, refuse and say what's missing.

The Run

Autopilot performs the run as an ordered drive over the producer skills. It does not reimplement any of them; each stage is the existing skill invoked in the current session.

1. Arm. Establish the run-scoped autonomy signal (autonomy-autopilot.md) at run scope — once for the whole run (see Single Arming). Resolve autonomy.autopilot (publish_ceiling, confirm_idea, stop_on) across the scope ladder.
2. Disclose. Emit the single up-front disclosure message (see the Disclosure section) before any stage runs.
3. Drive the stages from the resolved entry point, in order, advancing to the next stage only after the current stage completes successfully:
   • ideate (if entry ≤ Idea) → then honor the confirm_idea checkpoint (see the Idea Checkpoint section).
   • specify (if entry ≤ Feature) — its gates.feature.approved type: human entry is masked by the run-scoped signal; the type: ai reviewer still runs.
   • plan (if entry ≤ Plan) — its human review gate is masked; the baseline reviewer and P-001 coverage still hold.
   • implement — implementation.pre_commit is autonomous per approval-autonomy; implementation.pre_push is masked here (the push happens at the PR stage). Anomaly-halts still stop the run.
   • pull-request — open exactly one PR (see the Publish Ceiling section).
4. Hand back the trail (see the Handback section).

At every stage, a masked type: human entry is released by the reviewer-gates runner's Step 1.6; the producers take their decide-and-record branch instead of asking clarifying questions. Autopilot itself asks nothing except the one confirm_idea checkpoint.

Single Arming

The trigger arms the run-scoped autonomy signal once, for the remainder of the run. Autopilot does NOT re-arm at each stage boundary — crossing from specify into plan into implement requires no fresh signal.

The one exception is inherited, not owned: if implement hits an anomaly-halt (sibling conflict, BLOCKED subagent, unresolved lint, source-Feature drift), that is a genuine stop under approval-autonomy's rules, and implement requires the explicit continue re-arm before resuming. That anomaly re-arm is implement's, scoped to its own stage — it is not a per-stage gate autopilot introduces. A subsequent autopilot run starts unarmed and re-reads config from scratch.

Anomaly Halts

Autonomy masks human approval, never quality. Autopilot stops and hands back the blocker whenever:

• a stage's type: ai / type: deterministic reviewer returns Issues Found;
• specscore spec lint fails and --fix does not resolve it in one pass;
• implement reports any anomaly in its halt set (per approval-autonomy);
• a stop_on decision class fires (conflict is always in the set and not removable).

On any halt, autopilot names the specific cause, performs no auto-resolution, and does not advance. The user fixes it and re-triggers (or issues implement's continue re-arm for an implement-stage anomaly).

Idea Checkpoint (confirm_idea)

When the run auto-creates an Idea (entry at or before the Idea stage), autopilot pauses exactly once — the single human-approval stop of an otherwise unbroken run. This is the cheapest, highest-leverage place to bound drift: a raw one-line prompt is the most ambiguous possible input, and a 30-second Idea read catches divergence before it propagates downstream.

• Default on. With autonomy.autopilot.confirm_idea unset or true, after ideate crystallizes the Idea autopilot presents it and waits for explicit approval before invoking specify. The idea.approved human review gate is not masked at this checkpoint — it is deliberately preserved. Recognize approval with the standard explicit-approval phrase set; a vague positive gets one confirmation question.
• Opt-out. With confirm_idea: false, the checkpoint is masked like every other human gate and the cold-start run is fully unbroken.
• Not applicable when the Idea pre-exists. When the run enters at or after an already-Approved Idea, no checkpoint fires — the human already approved that Idea. The checkpoint is specifically for Ideas the run itself shaped.

On explicit approval (or when confirm_idea: false), continue to specify. On a change request, fold it into the Idea and re-present — the run does not proceed past an unapproved run-created Idea.

Publish Ceiling

Autopilot's ceiling is local commits + exactly one pull request, resolved from autonomy.autopilot.publish_ceiling (default pr):

• Commits land during implement via the existing implementation.pre_commit gate (autonomous per approval-autonomy). implementation.pre_push is masked in the implement stage — the push happens once, at the PR stage.
• After implement completes, autopilot invokes specstudio:pull-request exactly once to push the feature branch and open a single PR (built-in git push + gh pr create, or the project's configured pull_request.delegate). Its pull_request.pre_dispatch type: human entry is masked; a type: deterministic verify gate there is not masked and can still block.
• publish_ceiling: commit stops after local commits (no PR); publish_ceiling: stage stops after staging.

Autopilot MUST NOT merge, deploy, invoke ship, open more than one PR, or retry a failed PR delegate. The push safety floor (main/master/release/* denied by default) still applies — autonomy never weakens it.

Disclosure

Before any stage runs, autopilot emits one disclosure message so the user knows exactly what the run will do unattended. It states:

• the resolved entry point and the stages that will run;
• that human-approval gates are masked for the run, except the single confirm_idea checkpoint (named explicitly);
• that clarifying decisions will be auto-made and recorded to each artifact's decision log;
• that the run will commit locally and open one PR, and will not merge or deploy.

The disclosure is informational — it is not a per-stage approval prompt. The run proceeds immediately after it.

Handback

On successful completion, autopilot hands back a single summary — the primary review surface, meant to be read first:

• the resolved entry point and stages run;
• the created artifact paths (Idea / Feature / Plan);
• the local commit SHAs;
• the opened PR URL;
• the aggregated Autonomous Decisions log — every decide-and-record entry from every stage (Idea ## Key Assumptions additions + Feature/Plan ## Autonomous Decisions), collected in one place.

Autopilot does not auto-invoke specstudio:verify or specstudio:ship; it MAY recommend the user run them next.

References

• autonomy-autopilot.md — the autonomy.autopilot config namespace, the run-scoped autonomy signal, and the decide-and-record + ## Autonomous Decisions contract.
• reviewer-gates/runner.md — Step 1.6, the run-scoped human-gate mask this skill arms.
• approval-autonomy Feature — the reused implement/plan gate layer, anomaly-halts, and continue re-arm.
• publication-policy.md — the scope ladder the run-scoped signal sits on, and the push safety floor.
• Producer skills: ideate, specify, plan, implement, pull-request.