Close a card with DoD enforcement and a log.md closure entry — goc done refuses to close with any unchecked box. AUTO-INVOKE on "done", "close this", "finish X", "ship it", or when work satisfies a card's DoD. For every other status change, use advance-card.
Close a card with DoD enforcement and a log.md closure entry — goc done refuses to close with any unchecked box. AUTO-INVOKE on "done", "close this", "finish X", "ship it", or when work satisfies a card's DoD. For every other status change, use advance-card.
argument-hint
<title>
When to invoke
Invoke when the user says "done", "close this", "finish X", "mark complete", "wrap up", "ship it", or completes work that satisfies a card's DoD. The DoD checkboxes ARE the closure contract (Scrum Definition of Done).
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.
Close a card
Scrum's Definition of Done as a machine-checkable closure
contract: goc done counts unchecked boxes and refuses to flip the
status while any remain. The ticked checkbox list is the audit trail.
Closure is an eight-step contract — skip a step and the card is dishonest:
Verify the work satisfies the DoD criteria.
Run the project-specific closure audit (or honestly note that no project rubric applies).
Tick the DoD checkboxes in the README.
Append closure context to log.md (including the audit outcome).
Run goc attest <title> to record the Closure-verification block in .
log.md
Run goc done <title> (DoD-100% gated).
Run any project-specific post-close action defined in the consuming repo's hook.
Commit or hand off per the consuming repo's hook / normal runtime workflow.
If at any step the work turns out NOT to be a closure (a fix attempt
regressed, a hypothesis was disproved during verification), divert to
Skill(advance-card) for disproved / re-open instead.
Edge cases live in reference.md — a sibling file in this
skill's directory. Read the named section only when the situation
actually applies:
Situation
reference.md section
One fix closes several cards
Bundled closures
advanced-by-closed FAILs at attest time
Retraction vs waiting
An attest check needs --skip
Attest details and skip policy
New evidence after the card closed
After closure
Your fix also fixes someone else's open card
Other cards your fix also fixed
Commit-message shape, commit-failure handling
Commit conventions
Index hygiene when agents share a worktree
Parallel-agent commit safety
Why these gates exist
Rationale
User argument: $ARGUMENTS — title.
Step 1 — confirm the work satisfies the DoD
Read the card by running goc show <title> yourself with the real
title bound. Re-confirm each DoD criterion against the actual work:
- [ ] reproduce.py exits zero (defect no longer fires) — run
uv run python deck/<title>/reproduce.py, confirm exit 0 with the
no-defect output.
- [ ] <metric assertion> — run the relevant pytest / sweep and
capture the verification number.
Doc-quality criteria — re-read the cited paper / axiom and confirm
the doc now aligns.
If any criterion is NOT actually satisfied, stop the closure: a
failed fix attempt → revert, append a ## Disproved fix attempt
section to deck/<title>/log.md, leave status active or re-open
via Skill(advance-card); a disproved hypothesis → divert to
Skill(advance-card) <title> disproved.
Step 2 — project-specific closure audit
Closure must align with the consuming repo's documented principles,
not just pass tests — a green fix can still encode a default the
project disagrees with. The audit makes the closer name which
principle the closure aligns with, or honestly record that none is
touched.
<rubric-name> audit: PASS — no principle touched, mechanical fix
(be honest — if the fix binds any principle, name it instead)
If the audit FAILS — the fix encodes a default the rubric disagrees
with, masks a missing concept, or contradicts a documented principle —
STOP the closure: redesign the fix to align (preferred), or divert to
Skill(advance-card) <title> open and append an ## audit failed
section to log.md. If no rubric is defined (hook absent or empty),
record "no rubric configured; mechanical fix" verbatim.
No per-card DoD checkbox is required for the audit — it is a workflow
gate on every closure; the closure log entry is the audit trail.
Step 3 — tick the DoD checkboxes (update the dashboard)
Edit deck/<title>/README.md and mark each criterion - [x]. The
README is the dashboard: if the body's "Fix" or "Empirical
evidence" sections still reflect the pre-resolution framing, rewrite
them in place to describe the applied fix and final measurement.
Do NOT append a "Resolution (DATE)" block below the original framing
— the journal entry in Step 4 captures the transition (see
Skill(card-schema) "What goes where").
If the fix added a sub-criterion the original DoD didn't anticipate,
add a new ticked box and note in the body why. If a criterion turned
out to be moot, strike it from the DoD with a one-line justification
rather than ticking it falsely.
Step 4 — append closure context to log.md (the journal)
log.md is the append-only journal — never rewrite existing
entries; the closure entry is one more entry at the bottom:
The timestamp is ISO 8601 UTC. (goc attest's closure-marker check
date-prefix-matches, so legacy date-only headers keep validating.)
Step 5 — record the Closure verification (goc attest)
goc attest <title>
attest runs every project-wide (layer-2) and GoC-wide (layer-3)
check from .game-of-cards/config.yaml — automated subprocesses
(pytest, ruff, goc validate), derived card-state checks (DoD %,
advanced_by closure, closure-entry grep), and interactive
manual / agent confirmations — then appends a "Closure verification"
block to log.md. On any failure it exits non-zero and closure
blocks: fix the failing check and re-run. No waivers.
--skip <name> records [~] SKIPPED for one genuinely flaky
check — last resort, never routine (reference.md § Attest details
and skip policy).
An advanced-by-closed FAIL means a card in advanced_by is still
open: either wait for it to close, or retract a false edge with
goc unadvance <closing-title> --by <upstream-title>. Do NOT
--skip past it — see reference.md § Retraction vs waiting.
Step 6 — close via the CLI
goc done <title>
Refuses (exit 2, ERROR: <title>: <n> unchecked DoD box(es)) while any
box is unchecked. On success sets status: done + closed_at and
prints <title>: open → done.
done does NOT auto-commit — the closure flip ships with the work
commit in Step 8, not as a state-only commit.
A free-form prose DoD (zero checkboxes) needs --force; prefer
adding checkboxes.
One fix resolving several cards → goc done --bundle <A> <B> …
writes one shared attestation and cross-referenced closure entries;
read reference.md § Bundled closures before first use.
Before the flip, check whether your fix also retires a card nobody is
looking at — dedup ran when those cards were filed, so none of them
saw yours (reference.md § Other cards your fix also fixed):
Per open/active hit describing the defect you just fixed: at gate
none, goc status <other> superseded --by <title>. At gate
decision/session the engine refuses — lowering a gate is the
human's act — so append a ## <ts> — Staleness re-check entry to that
card's log.md naming your commit instead.
Step 7 — project-specific post-close action
If the hook file loaded in Step 2 also defines a post-close action (a
status-dashboard refresh, a changelog row, a release-notes entry),
run it now; otherwise this step is a no-op. Step 2 and this step
deliberately share the one hook file
(.game-of-cards/hooks/finish-card.md) — the consuming repo authors
both rubrics together.
Step 8 — commit or hand off
Follow the hook's commit flow if it defines one; otherwise use the
runtime's normal commit workflow. The final commit ships the work:
the code/doc diff plus the closure transition (DoD ticks, log entries
from Steps 4 + 5, status: done). Claim/decide/advance flips usually
committed earlier under workflow.auto_commit.
On a shared worktree, guard the index (rationale in reference.md
§ Parallel-agent commit safety):
git diff --cached --name-only # foreign staged files? another agent is mid-commit — back off
git add <path>... # explicit paths only — never `git add .` / `git add -A`
git diff --cached --stat
git commit -- <path>... # pathspec confines the commit to this closure's files
Never use git stash, git restore, git checkout --,
git reset --hard, or git clean as a commit-isolation technique.
Subject shape: fix(<scope>): <one-line subject> — closes <title>
(bundled closures append more slugs); body carries the WHY plus
verification numbers. Full conventions and commit-failure handling:
reference.md § Commit conventions.
Cross-references
reference.md (this skill's directory) — every edge case routed in
the table above.
Skill(card-schema) — DoD format + free-form-prose escape.
Skill(advance-card) — divert for → disproved or re-open.
