| name | loop-worker |
| description | Autonomously work a `.pm` workstream to completion — pick the next pending milestone, implement every task end to end, /ship it, then move to the next until none remain. Use when the user asks to "loop", drain, or work through a whole workstream's backlog (e.g. `/loop-worker w1`). Sequential, not interval-based; for a timed poll use /loop. |
Task: Drain a .pm workstream milestone by milestone
/loop-worker <wN> — repeatedly pick the next pending milestone in workstream <wN>, implement it fully, /ship it, and continue to the next, until the workstream has no pending milestones left (or a milestone genuinely blocks). This is a long-running autonomous loop over the .pm board; it composes /pm (board reads/writes), your own implementation work, and /ship.
Parse the target workstream from $ARGUMENTS (e.g. w1). If $ARGUMENTS is empty, STOP and ask which workstream to drain — never guess.
Preconditions (verify once, up front)
git branch --show-current is main. If not, STOP and ask (same rule as /ship).git status — note pre-existing uncommitted changes. Do not sweep unrelated changes into a milestone's ship; if the tree is dirty with work you didn't do, surface it and ask before starting.- The workstream
.pm/<wN>/README.md exists. If not, STOP and report.
The loop
Repeat until the exit condition below:
1. Pick the next pending milestone
Read .pm/<wN>/README.md. In the ## Milestones list, pending milestones are the unchecked ones (- [ ] **mN**). Pick the lowest-numbered pending milestone that still has a live directory (.pm/<wN>/mN/, not under done/). Cross-check by listing .pm/<wN>/m*/ and its done/ folder — the checkbox and the on-disk state must agree; if they disagree, trust the task files and flag the drift.
If there are no pending milestones, go to Exit.
Announce which milestone you picked and give a one-line plan before doing work.
2. Understand the milestone
Read .pm/<wN>/mN/README.md and every task file .pm/<wN>/mN/tNNN.md (skip any already in done/). These define the scope, order, and acceptance. Milestones ship features end to end — include the frontend tasks alongside the backend ones; do not stop at the API. Respect .pm/DO_NOT_DO.md and the milestone's own acceptance criteria.
3. Implement it
Do the actual engineering, task by task, in the order the milestone implies:
- Follow all
CLAUDE.md rules (id minting, boilerplate headers, .env.example sync, prettier on markdown, skill layout, etc.).
- Run the relevant test suites and make them pass before considering a task done —
make test (from lego/operator/), cd lego/backend && go test ./..., dashboard yarn test, whichever the change touches. Never mark a task complete on unverified code.
- You may delegate independent sub-tasks to subagents (Agent tool) to parallelize, but you own correctness.
- Keep the milestone's
.pm status in sync as you finish tasks (task frontmatter, milestone README **Status:** + the — DONE row, workstream checkbox) — these are /pm-governed writes, so follow the conventions in .claude/skills/pm/SKILL.md exactly. When the milestone is fully done, move it per the .pm rule: a done milestone with no open tasks moves whole to .pm/<wN>/done/mN/ (mv the directory, then rmdir the empty original — leave no tombstone), and its workstream checkbox flips to [x].
4. Ship it
Invoke /ship (the ship skill) for this milestone's changes. Because you made the changes this session, /ship runs session-aware: it stages exactly what you touched and writes the commit message from your knowledge. For substantial code changes it stays on duty until CI and the prod deploy are green. Do not proceed to the next milestone until /ship reports the shipped HEAD is landed (green CI / deploy for code changes; a quick CI snapshot for docs/.pm-only pushes).
If /ship surfaces a failure it cannot fix, treat it as a block (see below).
5. Continue
Loop back to step 1 to pick the next pending milestone.
Exit
Stop the loop and give a final summary when any of these holds:
- Done: no pending milestones remain in
<wN>. Report which milestones you shipped this run.
- Blocked: a milestone needs a decision only the user can make (ambiguous scope, a
DO_NOT_DO conflict, an external credential/access you lack, or repeated CI failure you can't resolve). Stop before shipping half-work — report the exact blocker and what you'd need to proceed. Do not skip a blocked milestone to grab a later one unless the user says so.
- Budget/interrupt: the user interrupts, or you've been running long enough that a checkpoint is warranted — report progress (shipped, in-flight, remaining) so the run can be resumed cleanly.
Guardrails
- One milestone per ship. Never batch two milestones into one commit; each milestone lands as its own shipped unit so history and rollback stay clean.
- Never ship red. A failing test suite is a block, not a footnote.
/ship's own gate (all three suites must pass before deploy) backs this up — don't try to route around it.
- Stay in
<wN>. Only pick milestones from the requested workstream. Workers are general-purpose, but this run is scoped to the queue the user named.
- Report honestly. If you skipped a task, mocked something, or a suite was flaky, say so in the per-milestone summary — don't present partial work as complete.
