Advance Card

When to invoke

Invoke when the user says "I'll start on X", "I'm working on", "mark this disproved", "supersede with Z", "this is part of X", "make this depend on Y", "these should be linked", "should this be an edge or a tag?", "remove this dependency", "unlink these", or describes any non-done status change or relationship-modeling intent. For "this is blocked by Y" / "unblock", set or clear the impediment overlay with goc wait (Step 6) instead of flipping status. Status transitions and relationship edges are documented agreements (Kanban explicit policies, Anderson).

Preflight

If any ! block below shows goc: command not found, Permission for this action has been denied, or no such file or directory: .game-of-cards/deck/, stop and invoke Skill(kickoff) first. Kickoff detects which setup step is missing (CLI not installed, Bash allowance not granted, project state not scaffolded) and walks the user through it. Re-invoke this skill only after kickoff completes.

Advance a card

Every status transition is a documented agreement, not a silent flag flip — the reason lives on disk: in the body for terminal transitions, in the commit message for mid-flight ones. Mutate a card's status — everything except done, which is Skill(finish-card)'s DoD-gated contract. Read the card first to confirm the transition is legal, then run the matching CLI.

Edge cases live in reference.md — a sibling file in this skill's directory. Read the named section only when the situation actually applies:

User argument: $ARGUMENTS — <title> <new-status> [--by <other-title>].

Step 1 — read the card

Run goc show <title> yourself with the real title bound. Confirm:

• Current status matches the transition (e.g. open → active requires current open).
• The human_gate fits the move. Flipping a session-gated card to active autonomously is a stop — that needs the human in the loop.
• For disproved / superseded, the body documents the rebuttal / replacement BEFORE you flip (reference.md § Terminal transitions).

status, human_gate, and the impediment overlay (waiting_on + waiting_until) are orthogonal axes — a card may be active AND carry waiting_on: external (see Skill(card-schema) "Three-axis stuck model"). The legacy status: blocked is deprecated; set the overlay (Step 6) or rely on derived readiness instead (reference.md § Deprecated blocked status).

Step 2 — match the transition to the CLI

• To release an authored draft to the queue without claiming it: goc publish <title>. A draft cannot be moved to superseded / disproved — a title-only scaffold has no authored scope to judge (see Skill(card-schema) "Draft").
• Parking on an external wait is the overlay's job (Step 6), never a status flip; a human-judgement wait raises human_gate instead.
• An advanced_by prereq that is still open needs NO status change — derived dependency-readiness shows it and self-clears when the prereq closes.

Step 3 — populate the two writing surfaces

Each transition routes writing to the README dashboard (rewrite in place) and/or the log.md journal (append):

Rule of thumb: state-of-the-world updates rewrite the README; transition narrative, decisions, and timestamps append to log.md (see Skill(card-schema) "What goes where"). The required body content for disproved (hypothesis / verdict / source of error) and superseded (typed link, journal rationale, no README rewrite) is specified in reference.md § Terminal transitions — read it before your first terminal flip.

Step 4 — run the transition

# Open → active (claiming):
goc status <title> active

# Add / remove a value-flow edge:
goc advance <title> --by <other>
goc unadvance <title> --by <other>

# Disproved / superseded:
goc status <title> disproved
goc status <title> superseded --by <successor-title>

The CLI prints <title>: <prior> → <new> on success and follows the repo's .game-of-cards/config.yaml workflow.auto_commit policy.

Step 5 — claim is its own commit

Status flips and edge mutations commit immediately, separately from the work commit, so a sibling branch pulling sees status: active before it races on the same YAML. --no-commit skips once; --commit forces a state-only commit when the repo config disables auto-commit. If the commit is skipped (no repo, mid-merge, no diff), the CLI prints a note — the on-disk state still mutated.

Step 6 — set or clear an impediment overlay (goc wait)

For exogenous waits the dependency graph cannot see: external (vendor / third party), resource (person or skill unavailable), deferred (calendar-postponed).

goc wait <title> --reason external --until 2026-06-15
goc wait <title> --until 2026-06-15    # bare --until implies deferred
goc wait <title> --reason resource     # open-ended wait
goc wait <title> --clear

A future waiting_until (or a reason with no date) hides the card from --ready / next-card / pull-card and re-enters it automatically when the date passes; an elapsed date is surfaced by goc validate as WAITING_OVERDUE. The overlay is orthogonal to status.

Edge vs tag (short form)

1. Same value chain — closing the source delivers a piece of the target's value → advances edge: goc advance <title> --by <other> (maintains both sides atomically; half-edges are validator errors; cycles forbidden).
2. Same theme, no closure dependency — a future filter would want them grouped → shared tag, no edge.
3. One card coordinates many — aggregation epic (closes when its children close) → child.advances: [epic]; governing cluster (closes when decided) → shared tag, NO edge; never epic.advances: [children] (BACKWARDS_EPIC_EDGE). The tell: a coordinator that closes on its own deliverable is a governing cluster.

At filing time, goc new <child> --advances <epic> --commit wires both sides in one atomic commit. Full decision procedure, the value-law reasoning, and the retraction contract: reference.md § Edge vs tag and § Retraction.

Worker field

goc status <title> active auto-populates worker with the current identity at claim time. Free-form: flat string (worker: rodja) or mapping (worker: {who: rodja, where: feature/foo}). Filter queue views with goc --worker <X> or the GOC_WORKER env var. Details: reference.md § Worker field.

Cross-references

• reference.md (this skill's directory) — edge cases routed in the table above.
• Skill(finish-card) — done transitions (DoD-gated).
• Skill(card-schema) — transition semantics, edge invariants, human_gate rules.
• Skill(create-card) — when a supersession needs a new card to point at.