hire

name	hire
description	Hire (create) a new aweek agent — collect identity, then interview the user to author plan.md (long-term goals, monthly plans, strategies, notes) so the agent is plan-ready immediately.
trigger	aweek hire, hire agent, new agent, add agent, create agent, aweek create agent

aweek:hire

Hire a new aweek agent interactively. Each aweek agent is a 1-to-1 wrapper around a Claude Code subagent defined in .claude/agents/<slug>.md. This skill captures identity (name, description, system prompt) AND conducts a short interview to populate the agent's planning markdown. It writes three things:

1. The subagent .md at .claude/agents/<slug>.md.
2. The aweek scheduling JSON shell at .aweek/agents/<slug>.json.
3. A fully-written plan.md at .aweek/agents/<slug>/plan.md, built from the interview answers (not the blank template).

After the hire finishes, the user can move straight to /aweek:plan Branch B to schedule their first week — no editor round-trip required.

The skill is a thin UX wrapper on top of src/skills/hire-create-new-menu.js (for the create-new branch) and src/skills/hire-all.js (when adopting an existing unhired subagent). All persistence and validation live in those modules — do not write agent JSON or .claude/agents/<slug>.md files directly.

Instructions

You MUST follow this exact workflow when this skill is invoked.

Step 0: Route Between Pick-Existing and Create-New

Before asking for any identity input, decide which branch of the wizard to run. The rule is simple: if there are one or more unhired Claude Code subagents already on disk under .claude/agents/<slug>.md (i.e. a file exists but there is no matching .aweek/agents/<slug>.json), offer the user a choice between adopting one of them or creating a brand-new subagent. When none are available, skip the branching question and go straight to the create-new path.

aweek exec hire-route determineHireRoute

The JSON result has the shape { route: 'create-new' | 'choose', unhired: string[], forcedCreateNew: boolean }.

• route === 'create-new' (also forcedCreateNew: true): Tell the user no unhired subagents were found under .claude/agents/ and jump straight to Step 1 (create-new). Do NOT ask "Pick existing or Create new?" in this case.
• route === 'choose': Use AskUserQuestion to offer exactly two options:
  1. Pick existing — adopt one of the slugs listed in unhired.
  2. Create new — write a fresh .claude/agents/<slug>.md via the Step 1 flow below.

If the user picks Create new, proceed to Step 1. If the user picks Pick existing, pick a slug via AskUserQuestion and jump to Step 2 (adopt-existing).

Plugin-namespaced subagents (slugs prefixed oh-my-claudecode- or geo-) are deliberately excluded from the unhired list per the v1 refactor constraint and must never be offered as adoption targets.

Step 1: Collect Agent Identity (Create-New Path)

The create-new path writes a brand-new subagent file with minimal frontmatter (name + description only) and the user-supplied system prompt as the body. Collect exactly three identity fields using AskUserQuestion — do not prompt for model, tools, skills, or MCP servers. Users who want to override any of those edit the generated .md file by hand.

Do NOT proceed until all three fields are provided and non-empty.

1. Name (required, 1-100 chars): Ask for the agent's name. It will be slugified into a filesystem-safe slug and used as the filename of .claude/agents/<slug>.md, the aweek agent id, and the subagentRef.

   • Example: "Content Writer" → slug content-writer
   • Must contain at least one alphanumeric character.

2. Description (required, single line): Written verbatim to the description: frontmatter field on the new .md.

   • Example: "Writes weekly research briefs and summaries."

3. System Prompt (required): The prompt body Claude Code will use when this subagent runs. Written verbatim as the body of the new .md.

   • Example: "You are a meticulous research assistant who produces well-cited summaries."

4. Weekly Token Budget (optional, default 500000): Ask for the weekly token limit for this agent's aweek scheduling budget. Must be a positive integer. Not written to the .md; stored on the aweek JSON.

After collecting the three identity fields, show the user a short summary and ask for explicit AskUserQuestion confirmation before persisting. If the user declines, return to the relevant field to correct input — do not silently discard the collected data.

On confirmation, persist both artifacts in one call via runCreateNewHire (which writes or adopts the subagent .md, then wraps it with the aweek scheduling JSON shell):

echo '{
  "name": "<NAME>",
  "description": "<DESCRIPTION>",
  "systemPrompt": "<SYSTEM_PROMPT>",
  "weeklyTokenLimit": <LIMIT>
}' | aweek exec hire-create-new-menu runCreateNewHire --input-json -

The result has this shape:

{
  "success": true,
  "validation": { "valid": true, "errors": [], "slug": "content-writer" },
  "subagent": { "success": true, "adopted": false, "slug": "content-writer", "path": "…", "content": "…" },
  "hire":     { "success": true, "created": ["content-writer"], "skipped": [], "failed": [] }
}

To render the formatted summary the user sees:

# $RESULT is the JSON payload from the previous call
echo "$RESULT" | aweek exec hire-create-new-menu formatCreateNewResult \
  --input-json - --format text

Three failure modes, each with its own remediation:

• Validation failure (result.validation.valid === false): the three fields were invalid. Nothing was written. Surface the formatted output (it starts with "Input rejected — …") and re-prompt the user.
• Subagent write failure (result.subagent.success === false): the .md write failed and the aweek JSON wrapper was never attempted. Surface the "Subagent file error" block and resolve the underlying filesystem issue before retrying.
• Wrapper failure (result.hire.success === false): the .md landed but the aweek JSON shell failed. Surface the nested hire-all summary so the user sees which slug failed and why.

Adoption is a first-class outcome, not a failure: when .claude/agents/<slug>.md already exists, the helper returns subagent.adopted: true and keeps the on-disk .md verbatim. The typed description + system prompt are discarded per the "single source of truth" constraint. Tell the user adoption happened and display subagent.content so they can confirm what they are wiring into aweek scheduling.

Step 2: Adopt an Existing Subagent (Pick-Existing Path)

When the user picked Pick existing in Step 0, wrap the chosen slug with a minimal aweek scheduling JSON shell via hireAllSubagents. The handler iterates internally, so pass the single slug as an array:

echo '{
  "slugs": ["<SLUG>"]
}' | aweek exec hire-all hireAllSubagents --input-json -

To render the summary:

echo "$RESULT" | aweek exec hire-all formatHireAllSummary \
  --input-json - --format text

The handler is idempotent (re-wrapping an already-hired slug reports skipped, not an error) and defensive (plugin-namespaced slugs, missing .md files, and invalid slug shapes surface as structured skipped / failed entries instead of throwing).

Step 3: Interview the User to Build plan.md

After the hire completes (either branch), the subagent directory contains a blank-template plan.md (the hireAllSubagents handler seeds it automatically). Replace that template with a plan derived from a short interview — this is the whole point of the hire flow feeling "complete": the user walks away with an agent that already has direction.

Collect four free-form answers via AskUserQuestion, one at a time. Each prompt should be short and concrete; the answer field accepts multi-line input. Skip-to-next is allowed — an empty answer falls back to a placeholder comment in the rendered plan.

1. Long-term goals — "What should achieve over the next 1 month / 3 months / 1 year? Bullet points are fine."
2. Monthly plans — "What's the focus for the current month? Add more ### YYYY-MM sections below if you're already thinking ahead."
3. Strategies — "How should work? Preferred tone, tools, rituals, guardrails — anything the weekly planner should respect."
4. Notes — "Anything else the agent should know?" (Optional.)

After collecting the answers, render the plan body and write it — overwriting the template seeded by the hire handler:

echo '{
  "name": "<AGENT_NAME>",
  "description": "<DESCRIPTION>",
  "longTermGoals": "<ANSWER_1>",
  "monthlyPlans":  "<ANSWER_2>",
  "strategies":    "<ANSWER_3>",
  "notes":         "<ANSWER_4>"
}' | aweek exec plan-markdown buildFromInterview --input-json -

The response is a markdown string. Pipe it straight into a write:

echo '{
  "agentsDir": ".aweek/agents",
  "agentId":   "<SLUG>",
  "body":      "<BODY_FROM_buildFromInterview>"
}' | aweek exec plan-markdown write --input-json -

Always echo a short confirmation to the user: the absolute path of the written plan (so they know where to edit later) plus a one-line summary of what the four sections now contain.

Do not spawn an editor and do not ask the user to open the file — the whole point of the interview is to skip the editor round-trip. If the user wants to polish prose, point them at /aweek:plan Branch A as a follow-up.

Validation Rules

• Name — 1-100 chars, non-empty, must contain at least one alphanumeric character so it slugifies to a non-empty filename.
• Description — 1-200 chars, single line, non-empty.
• System prompt — non-empty string.
• Weekly token limit — positive integer, default 500000.

All artifacts are validated against JSON schemas before save.

Error Handling

• If the user provides empty or invalid input, explain what's wrong and re-ask only the invalid field.
• If schema validation fails on persist, show the specific errors and allow correction.
• The storage layer auto-creates the data directory if needed.
• Slug collisions trigger the adopt-existing path automatically — the on-disk .md is kept verbatim and the typed description / system prompt are discarded.

Next Steps

After a successful hire + interview, tell the user:

• Goals, monthly plans, and strategies are already in .aweek/agents/<slug>/plan.md. Revisit them anytime with /aweek:plan Branch A.
• Create the first weekly plan with /aweek:plan Branch B. That's the only remaining step before the heartbeat can start firing tasks.
• The heartbeat system activates after the first weekly plan approval.
• View the full agent roster with /aweek:summary.

Data Directory

Agents are stored in .aweek/agents/<agent-id>.json relative to the project root. Identity data (name, description, system prompt) lives in .claude/agents/<agent-id>.md and is the single source of truth — edit that file directly to rename or re-prompt the agent.