takeoff

name	takeoff
description	Session kickoff protocol - the opposite of "land the plane". Use this skill whenever the user says "takeoff", "take off", "/takeoff", "starting a new session", "what should I work on", "kickoff", "what's next", or wants a prioritized view of the backlog at the start of work. Surfaces the top-priority backlog tasks as a table with status, dependencies, and blockers pulled from Backlog.md (CLI + MCP). Use this at the start of a coding session to orient on what to work on.
argument-hint	[optional: filter by tag, assignee, or count e.g. '--top 5' or '--mine']

Take Off Protocol

The session kickoff counterpart to "land the plane". Where land the plane closes out work (commit, push, PR, handoff), /takeoff starts work by giving a crisp, prioritized picture of the backlog so the user knows what to pick up.

Trigger

Any variation of:

• /takeoff, takeoff, take off, let's take off, time to take off, ready to take off
• what should I work on, what's next, kickoff, start a new session, show me the backlog

When in doubt and the user is at the start of work (not finishing), invoke this protocol.

What this skill produces

A short, scannable briefing with four sections:

1. Top Priority Table — the N highest-priority actionable tasks
2. Blocked / Dependent — tasks that exist but cannot be started
3. In Progress — tasks already underway (not to be double-claimed)
4. Recommendation — one sentence: "Start with X because …"

Keep it terse. The user wants to pick a task and go, not read a report.

Execution

Step 1: Pick the source of work

Decide where the actionable items come from. Two paths, mutually exclusive — never both:

if [ -d backlog ]; then
  echo "backlog present — using Backlog.md"
  source="backlog"
elif [ -d docs/plans ] && ls docs/plans/*.md >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  echo "no backlog/, falling back to docs/plans/"
  source="plans"
else
  echo "no backlog/ and no docs/plans/ — nothing to surface"
  source="none"
fi

• source=backlog → continue to Step 2.
• source=plans → skip Steps 2–3 (they are backlog-specific) and go straight to Step 4, summarizing the plan files in priority order. Tell the user you're using the docs/plans/ fallback because no backlog exists.
• source=none → tell the user there's nothing to surface, then jump to Step 6 to emit the banner. The successful-no-work path still counts as a successful completion.

Step 2: Pull the backlog

Important: do not rely on backlog task list as the primary source. When backlog/config.yml sets a task_prefix, the CLI filters output to that prefix only and silently drops every other task in the backlog. Read the filesystem instead so /takeoff always shows every task regardless of prefix.

Enumerate every task file directly:

# All task markdown files across the backlog (tasks/, drafts/, nested epic dirs, etc.)
find backlog -type f -name '*.md' \
  -not -path 'backlog/archive/*' \
  -not -path 'backlog/completed/*' \
  -not -path 'backlog/docs/*' \
  -not -path 'backlog/decisions/*' \
  -not -path 'backlog/milestones/*' \
  -not -name 'README.md'

For each file, extract YAML frontmatter (the block between the first two --- lines) and pull: id, title, status, priority, assignee, dependencies, parent_task_id (if present), and any blocked_by field. Treat missing priority as MEDIUM. Treat missing status as To Do.

If the MCP tool mcp__backlog__task_list is available and is known to honor every prefix (not the CLI behavior), it can supplement — but the filesystem scan is the source of truth.

If backlog is installed, also pull sequence info to detect cross-task dependencies (this command does not filter by prefix). When backlog is absent, fall back to the filesystem scan above — it is the authoritative source — and print a one-line notice so the fallback is visible:

if command -v backlog >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  backlog sequence list --plain
else
  echo "(backlog CLI not installed — relying on filesystem scan for dependency info)"
fi

Parse both. You want: id, title, priority, status, assignee, dependencies, blocked-by, parent.

After parsing, group tasks by ID prefix (the segment before the first -, e.g. ACANEBULA, NEBULA, CLEANUP) so Step 4 can render related clusters together. Every prefix must be represented in the output — never narrow to a single prefix unless --tag or --mine was passed.

Step 3: Classify each task

For every task returned, bucket it:

Bucket	Criteria
Actionable	status = "To Do", no unresolved dependencies, not assigned to someone else
Blocked	status = "To Do" but has a blocked_by / unresolved dependency
In Progress	status = "In Progress" or "Doing"
Done	status = "Done" — skip, don't surface

If a task has a dependency, note which task blocks it by ID.

Step 4: Render the backlog as bulleted groups

Sort actionable tasks by priority (HIGH → MEDIUM → LOW), then by ID. By default show the top 5 in the top-priority group. If the user passed --top N, honor that. If they passed --mine, filter to their assignee.

Format: flat bullet lists grouped by category, with an emoji header on each secondary group. Tables wrap poorly in narrow terminals and compete with the numbered ID column. A plain - ID — Title bullet reads cleanly at any width and matches how users already scan backlogs.

Use — (em-dash) as the separator between ID and title. For tasks with dependencies, append (blocked by X, Y) or (depends on X) at the end of the line.

Group headers use these emojis:

• 🛫 Top-priority actionable group (the main recommendation pool)
• 🔵 Epic subtasks, or clusters of related follow-ups (e.g., 🔵 DOCREVIEW epic subtasks (children of DOCREVIEW-1))
• 🟢 In Progress
• ⚪ LOW / Housekeeping
• 🔴 Blocked / Dependent (only when all blockers are hard blockers)

Emit the output directly as markdown in your final response — no code fences, no custom rendering scripts.

Shape:

## 🛫 Takeoff — <repo-name>

### Top Priority (actionable)

- AGENTSAPI-1 — Orchestrator admin-agents client + manifest types
- AGENTSAPI-2 — Admin Agents list page + row actions (depends on AGENTSAPI-1)
- NEBULA-42 — PR comment three-step enforcement hook
- NEBULA-53 — agent-browser coverage audit for Nebula admin agents UI

🔵 DOCREVIEW epic subtasks (children of DOCREVIEW-1)

- DOCREVIEW-1.1 — strip Recommendations / Answered-by / suggestion strip from final chain message
- DOCREVIEW-1.2 — generalize Review Document button via ChainConfig.producesReviewableDocument

🔵 PIPELINEPANE follow-ups (related to in-progress)

- PIPELINEPANE-3 — stop resetting orchestrationActive after animation completes (blocked by PIPELINEPANE-1, PIPELINEPANE-2)
- PIPELINEPANE-4 — regression sweep + solutions note (blocked by PIPELINEPANE-3)

🟢 In Progress

- AGENTSAPI-7 — something currently being worked on (@sam)

⚪ LOW / Housekeeping

- NEBULA-35 — Enforce backlog.md usage via MCP server and hooks
- NEBULA-39 — Document backlog-first workflow in AGENTS.md

### Recommendation
Start with **AGENTSAPI-1**. It's the next unblocked HIGH-priority item and clears the path for 2 more.

Formatting rules for this step:

• One task per line. Do not wrap a task across multiple lines — long titles stay on one line and let the terminal soft-wrap them.
• Group headers use H3 (###) for top-priority only; secondary groups use a bold-emoji line (e.g., 🔵 DOCREVIEW epic subtasks), not an H-level heading. This matches the shape the user has already endorsed.
• Omit groups that have zero tasks. If In Progress is empty, write 🟢 In Progress — _None_ or just skip it.
• Never emit a table. No pipes, no box-drawing characters.

Escape any pipes inside task titles with \| as a defensive measure, even though bullets don't depend on pipe syntax. Do not truncate titles.

Step 5: Offer a next step

End with a single question: "Want me to open the plan for <ID> and start /ce-work on it?" — do not auto-start. Takeoff is for orientation, not execution.

Step 6: Final banner

After the recommendation question, emit a single final line:

✈️ TAKE OFF — NOW AT 30,000 FEET

This must be the last line of output — no content after it, no code fence, no trailing heading, no follow-up prose. It fires on every successful completion path, including the no-backlog fallback (Step 1) and the empty-task-list edge case (see Edge cases). Do not emit the banner if the routine aborts before producing a briefing.

Formatting rules

• Bullets, not tables. Tables break at narrow widths and force column padding; bullets flow cleanly and match how the user already reads a backlog.
• Group with emoji headers. 🛫 top-priority, 🔵 related clusters / epics, 🟢 in progress, ⚪ housekeeping, 🔴 hard-blocked.
• Never hide blockers. Annotate dependencies inline with (blocked by X) or (depends on X) — don't silently drop the task.
• Show dependency IDs explicitly. (blocked by AGENTSAPI-1) is useful; (has dependencies) is not.
• Be honest about emptiness. If there are zero actionable tasks, say so and suggest creating one or picking up in-progress work.
• Always end with the takeoff banner. The final line of every successful invocation must be ✈️ TAKE OFF — NOW AT 30,000 FEET — including fallback and empty-list paths.

Why this shape

The user already has a "land the plane" routine that handles closing work. Takeoff's job is the mirror image: one concentrated briefing that answers "what am I about to do and why" in under 15 seconds of reading. A table + a one-line recommendation beats a paragraph because the user is scanning, not reading.

Dependencies matter more than priority on their own — a HIGH task that's blocked is worse than a MEDIUM task that's ready. That's why the table shows Deps and why the recommendation should factor in unblocking power, not just raw priority.

Arguments

• --top N — show N tasks in the top-priority table (default 5)
• --mine — filter to tasks assigned to the current user (resolve via git config user.email or git config user.name)
• --all — also include LOW priority actionable tasks
• --tag <tag> — filter by a backlog tag/label

If no arguments are given, use defaults.

Edge cases

• No backlog directory → fall back to docs/plans/ summaries; tell the user.
• CLI missing but MCP present → use MCP only.
• Everything is blocked → surface the root blockers and ask whether to create a task to unblock them.
• Task list is empty → congratulate the user and suggest /ce-ideate or /ce-plan to generate new work.
• Tasks without priority set → treat as MEDIUM.
• backlog/config.yml sets task_prefix → the CLI's backlog task list will only return tasks matching that prefix. Do not use the CLI as the primary source — Step 2 already mandates a filesystem scan to ensure every task across every prefix is surfaced. If the briefing only shows tasks from one prefix, that's the bug — re-scan the filesystem.