sprint

name	sprint
description	Sprint lifecycle: plan, run, review, retro. The top-level orchestrator for autonomous issue resolution. Use for "run a sprint", "plan the sprint", "sprint review", "sprint retro", "/sprint", "/sprint plan", "/sprint review", "/sprint retro", or any variant.

Sprint

The sprint lifecycle has four phases. Route based on arguments:

Input	Action
/sprint plan	→ Read references/plan.md
/sprint (sprint plan exists) or /sprint <N> (sprint number matching a plan file)	→ Auto-chain: read references/run.md and execute run; at wind-down, read references/review.md and execute the release inline; then read references/retro.md and execute the retro inline — all in the same session, no re-invocation
/sprint run or /sprint run <N>	→ Run-only: read references/run.md and execute; mark the sprint-plan header with (RUN ONLY) next to the "Started …" timestamp; stop at wind-down without review/retro
/sprint <issue-numbers> (multiple numbers, or single number with no matching plan)	→ Read references/run.md and run those specific issues (no auto-chain — there's no sprint plan to base review/retro on)
/sprint (no issues, no plan)	→ Offer: "No sprint plan found. Run /sprint plan first, or pass issue numbers."
/sprint review	→ Read references/review.md
/sprint retro	→ Read references/retro.md

Why auto-chain is the default: a sprint's post-run context (~300k+ tokens) is worth more than a single release cut. Running review and retro in a fresh /sprint review invocation pays a full cache miss to re-read everything you already know. Auto-chain executes review + retro inline in the same session and preserves it.

Disambiguation /sprint <N>: if .claude/sprints/sprint-<N>.md exists, <N> is a sprint number → auto-chain. Otherwise treat <N> as an issue number → run-only with no auto-chain.

Sprint numbering

Sprints are numbered sequentially. The current sprint number is determined by:

ls .claude/sprints/sprint-*.md | sort -t- -k2 -n | tail -1

If no sprint files exist, start at sprint 10 (we've done ~9 unnumbered sprints).

The sprint number threads through all phases:

• Plan writes .claude/sprints/sprint-N.md
• Run reads that file for its issue list
• Review appends results to that file
• Retro writes .claude/diary/yyyyMMdd.N.md

Key references

• references/mcx-claude.md — session management commands
• references/plan.md — sprint planning phase
• references/run.md — sprint execution phase (orchestrator prose)
• references/review.md — release + changelog phase
• references/retro.md — retrospective / diary phase
• references/introspection.md — periodic code-first introspection (sprints ending in 7)
• references/investigations.md — nerd-snipe gate before impl (flakies, recurring bugs, perf/security findings); load-bearing spawn shape (mcx claude spawn, NOT Agent tool — see #2009)

Per-phase logic is defined in .mcx.yaml + .claude/phases/*.ts, not in run.md. Inspect a phase with mcx phase show <name> or preview its next action with mcx phase run <name> --dry-run. See docs/phases.md for the manifest schema.

Rules (apply to all phases)

• Never implement directly. Always delegate to spawned sessions.
• Never switch models mid-stream. Kill and restart fresh if wrong model.
• Spawn fresh sessions per phase. Don't reuse across implement/review/QA.
• File every problem as an issue. Unfiled problems are invisible problems.
• Never randomly kill the daemon. File an issue if a kill seems required.
• Use mcx claude wait, not sleep. wait --timeout is event-driven and interruptible.
• One long-lived sprint-{N} branch per sprint, in a worktree at .claude/worktrees/sprint-{N}/. All sprint-meta commits — plan, mid-sprint amendments, run-time edits (timestamps, Excluded section), Results section, retro diary, release commit — accumulate on this branch. A single auto-merge PR is opened at plan time (as draft) and converted to ready at retro. This gives one watchable PR per sprint, replaces the older mix of sprintNN/plan / sprintNN/retro / release/vX.Y.Z short-lived branches, and means the orchestrator never pushes directly to main (which the autoapprover blocks). The worktree name matches the branch (.claude/worktrees/sprint-46/ for sprint 46) so leftover state from a previous sprint never collides. Between-sprint meta-fixes (.claude/skills/**, etc., applied via plan.md Step 1a) use a separate meta/<descriptor> branch since they live outside any sprint. See references/{plan,run,review,retro}.md for the per-phase command sequences.