| name | on-duty |
| description | Use this skill to stand watch — the agent's duty cycle in a verstakified repo, autonomous work from the doer's inbox agenda. Triggers: 'заступай на вахту', 'вахта', 'разгребай инбокс', 'on duty', 'stand watch', 'sweep the inbox', 'duty cycle', or an autonomous session start where AGENTS.md names an agent karta. Also scopes to one transformation: 'продвигай bianhua', 'доведи превращение', 'drive the bianhua' — the queue becomes its open anga, arrival is proposed to the owner. Loop: orient → agenda → pick workable vimarshas → work per repo ritual (commit, push, PR) → wire dependencies into other doers' inboxes → weave the wake → wait (webhook or ≤30-min re-check) → escalate transcendent will to the owner. Composes entry, inquiry, writing, weaving; the graph is the durable state between wakes. Needs nks_* MCP tools and a verstakified AGENTS.md. |
NKS On-Duty — the watch
An agent in a verstakified repo has an identity: the agent karta named in AGENTS.md, steward of the repo's contour. Its inbox — incoming posed_to vimarshas on that karta — is where other doers (human and agent) put work that expects this doer to act. This skill is the closed loop that drains it: take what is workable, ship it, wire the relay to whoever depends on it, wait consciously, repeat.
The loop is stateless by design: the graph is the only durable state. Every exit point — a wait, a crash, a context death — must leave the graph consistent enough that a fresh session re-enters through the same inbox and continues. If resuming would require this session's memory, you have left the rails.
0 · Identity and orientation
- Run the entry protocol:
nks_orient(realm=<AGENTS.md realm>, focus=<focus holon>); read the ACTIVE BIANHUA map.
- Open the agenda:
nks_orient(realm=…, focus=<agent-karta-seq>) — the doer's agenda: your род, the open posed_to queue (answered items fold away), the boundaries you steward with their transformation and tension counters.
- No agent karta in AGENTS.md → this skill does not apply; tell the user the repo needs a verstakify pass (the steward slot).
1 · Select
From the open queue (the mode badge is authoritative — visarjana/virodha are done, upeksha is parked; the agenda pre-filters, raw edge lists do not):
| Take | Skip — and say why in the report |
|---|
| in-mandate: the work lives in your stewarded contour and needs no transcendent will | out-of-mandate → escalate (step 6) |
| actionable: you can state what would discharge it | under-specified → update it with the question you need answered, addressed back to its poser |
| unblocked: not waiting on another doer's part | blocked → ensure the upstream vimarsha exists and is current (step 4); it waits, not you |
Order: items that unblock another doer first (someone's inbox waits on you — read it from the relay: who is posed_to on dependents, which bianhua stall), then newest first. Ranking comes from structure, never from urgency stamps.
Work one coherent cluster at a time: vimarshas that touch the same files/contour ride one branch and one PR; unrelated ones wait for the next turn of the loop.
1b · Mode: driving a bianhua
When the user names a transformation — "продвигай bianhua #N через инбокс", "доведи превращение" — the same loop runs scoped to its arrival:
- Map first:
nks_orient(lens="bianhua", focus=<N>) — telos, anga drivers with resolved marks, touched holons. Check the forest for anantara: an open predecessor means this bianhua is blocked — surface that instead of pushing work into it.
- The queue is the anga. Your picks: open anga of N in your mandate —
nks_search(q="", posed_to=<your-karta>, anga_of=<N>) (the filters combine), then the unassigned remainder. The mode's core invariant: no open anga without an inbox — an anga living in another doer's contour gets a relay vimarsha (anchored, posed_to, "Answered when:") into their inbox; an unassigned anga in your contour you take.
- Work raises new drivers: a question that must be answered for this telos → pose it and anga-attach it (writing); it joins the queue at once.
- Exit changes: the cycle ends at arrival — every anga discharged or consciously parked/escalated, integration merged and verified. The bianhua's own closure is the owner's acceptance: propose it with the evidence (map at N/N, integration green); never close it yourself.
- Report progress each tact from the map's resolved count.
2 · Work
Each vimarsha names its own flow — follow it, not a generic one: a code defect → fix + tests per the AGENTS.md gates; a question → answer it (inquiry: addressed_by, close); a design ask → the design skill; graph repair → weaving. Repo ritual is law: branch discipline, quality gate, conventional commits — all from AGENTS.md. Commit, push; open the PR when the repo's flow says PR. Never merge your own PR unless AGENTS.md explicitly sanctions it. A PR awaiting review is a git-surface expectation — do not mirror it as a vimarsha to the owner; only when the un-merged branch blocks another doer's anga does the relay vimarsha say so.
3 · Integrate locally
If AGENTS.md documents a local integration surface (dev backend, preview server, a make target) — restart or rebuild it and verify the change actually runs; the loop's claim is "shipped and running", not "pushed". Only what AGENTS.md documents: never invent restarts, never touch shared or production surfaces from this loop.
4 · Wire the relay
The step most loops forget — and the reason the graph sits between agents at all:
- Downstream — another doer depends on what you shipped: make the change land in their inbox. Either a new vimarsha (anchored in their contour,
posed_to their karta) or an update to the vimarsha they already watch. An update is a delta, not a ping: state what changed and what is now possible. A content-free "ping" invites ping-pong livelock.
- Upstream — you depend on someone: make sure a current vimarsha sits in the blocker's inbox stating (a) exactly what you need and (b) what counts as an answer. An explicit "Answered when: …" line in the description is what lets the other agent recognize it can discharge you.
- Both directions follow writing discipline: anchor (
vimarsha_of into the addressee's territory) and inbox edge (posed_to, found via the steward arrow — never from the orient showcase). One without the other is invisible.
Integration merges — only when granted
Merging is off by default (step 2). When the user or AGENTS.md explicitly grants merge rights for the integration, the merge order is agreed through inboxes, never guessed: the chain of relay vimarshas is the order — each states whose part lands first ("Answered when: upstream branch merged, integration green"). Merge your branch only when your upstream vimarsha is discharged; then update the downstream doer's vimarsha with the delta ("merged, integration green" — states of the world, never SHAs/branch names in nodes) so their turn arrives. Across whole transformations the same ordering is anantara.
5 · Close
- Every resolved vimarsha leaves by an inquiry door:
addressed_by → visarjana; crystallize what became standing knowledge. Never leave answered-but-open items — a swept inbox that is not closed re-litigates itself next session.
- Weave the wake. Every tact ends with a weaving pass over what it touched:
nks_orient(lens="tensions", focus=<touched holon>) — close the lifecycles the change opened, write sense on new arrows, reconnect what a new distinction moved (the weaving skill). Weave-class tensions are yours to fix before sleeping; address-class go to the agenda. A tact that ships code but leaves the graph torn is not closed.
- Run the repo's push→NKS ritual (phenomena to shipped state, map advanced) per AGENTS.md.
6 · Escalate
Transcendent will is not yours (inquiry's boundary): refusal, ordering across questions, scope or telos changes, production and money risk, anything AGENTS.md marks owner-only. Pose it to the owner karta (主 in AGENTS.md), anchored where the decision lives, with its own "Answered when:" — then keep working whatever does not depend on it.
7 · Wait — or don't
Before waiting, check the queue: is there a next item that does not conflict with in-flight work (different contour, different files, no shared branch)? Yes → loop to step 1.
Genuinely waiting on another doer:
| Capability (per AGENTS.md or documented public tooling) | Move |
|---|
| A webhook can wake you (e.g. a karta webhook on your inbox) | verify it is actually armed (list/inspect — don't assume), then sleep until fired; arm a bounded fallback re-check too if the harness allows — a webhook whose sender died sleeps forever |
| Timers only | sleep the time you would honestly give the other side for its integration part — never more than 30 minutes — then re-enter at step 0 |
| Neither (interactive session, no timer) | report state to the user and end the turn — the graph holds; the next watch ("заступай на вахту") re-enters cleanly |
Waking up = step 0 again (orient → agenda), never "resume from memory": the world moved while you slept.
Invariants
- The graph is the durable state. Every exit leaves it consistent; a dead session is resumable from the inbox alone.
- Updates are deltas, never bare pings.
- Every expectation is a vimarsha — anchored,
posed_to, with "Answered when:". No side-channel dependencies.
- One cluster in flight. No multi-front sprawl inside one loop turn.
- In bianhua mode, no open anga without an inbox — assignment is visible in the graph, arrival is proposed to the owner, never self-declared.
- Every tact weaves its wake before the loop sleeps or ends.
- Repo ritual is law. Gates, branches, PR rules from AGENTS.md; never
--force; never merge your own PRs without sanction.
- A direct user instruction interrupts the loop. The inbox serves the user, not the other way around.
- Report at every pause: what was swept, what shipped, what waits on whom, what was escalated.
What on-duty is NOT
- Not assembly (the realm-wide pass) and not bare inquiry — it composes inquiry per item and adds the repo work, the relay, and the wait.
- Not a mandate expander: the inbox says what is asked; the stewarded contour says what is yours.
- Not a scheduler of other agents: you wire vimarshas into their inboxes; when they run is their loop's business.
Acceptance
- From a cold session, the loop reaches "inbox drained, or every remaining item consciously waiting / escalated / skipped-with-reason" without human input.
- Every wait is represented in the graph — an updated vimarsha in someone's inbox — before the agent sleeps.
- A second agent reading only the graph can tell what this agent shipped, what it waits for, and what it asks.
