greeting-checkin

name	greeting-checkin
description	Greeting-triggered self-check — recognise greetings, check Edition version against the upstream tag, scan AI-Memory announcements, and report inside the greeting reply
lastReviewed	2026-04-30T00:00:00.000Z

Greeting Check-in

The heir's pull-based health check. Replaces the deleted weekly auto-update workflow. Fires from greeting-checkin.instructions.md on the first greeting of a session, or on demand via /checkin.

Greeting Recogniser

Match case-insensitively against the trimmed first message. Treat as a greeting if it is substantially one of:

Bucket	Examples
Salutation	hi, hello, hey, yo, howdy
Time-of-day	good morning, good afternoon, good evening, morning, evening
Check-in question	how are you, how's it going, how have you been, what's up, you there
Compound	any of the above plus the heir's name or a comma-suffix (hi alex,, hey there)

Do not trigger on:

• Substantive requests that happen to start with "hi" (e.g. hi, can you fix this build error?) — process the request normally
• Acknowledgements (thanks, ok, cool, got it)
• Anything longer than ~80 characters — long messages aren't pure greetings

Check Protocol

Run these in order. Each step is best-effort: if it fails, note the failure and continue.

1. Confirm this is a heir

Read .github/.act-heir.json. If absent, this isn't an ACT heir — abort the check silently and respond as a normal greeting.

Capture: heir_id, edition_version (current), last_sync_at.

2. Check Edition version

Run the upgrade script in dry-run mode and capture stdout:

node .github/scripts/upgrade-self.cjs

Parse the output for the Edition version available: line. Compare to edition_version from the marker.

Outcomes:

• Same version → "you're on the latest Edition (vX.Y.Z)"
• New patch/minor available → "Edition vX.Y.Z is out — patch/minor bump from vA.B.C. Run /upgrade when you're ready."
• New major available → "Edition vX.0.0 is out — major bump from vA.B.C. /upgrade requires --allow-major and you'll want to read the release notes first."
• Network error / git failure → "couldn't reach Edition; will retry next session" — don't block

3. Check shared memory announcements

Resolve the shared memory bus using resolveMemoryBus() from _registry.cjs (sibling ../Alex_ACT_Memory). CLI: node .github/scripts/_registry.cjs --resolve .

Once the root is resolved, check <root>/announcements/ for *.md files (skip README.md).

Parse frontmatter for date (or fall back to file mtime). Filter to files newer than last_sync_at from the heir marker.

Outcomes:

• Memory bus not found → note silently; do not prompt
• No new announcements → "no new announcements"
• 1-3 new announcements → list them by title, with one-line summaries
• 4+ new announcements → say how many, list the most recent 3, point at the folder

3b. Execute auto_actions from announcements

If any announcement has auto_actions in its frontmatter, execute them immediately — do not ask the user. These are Supervisor-issued maintenance commands, not suggestions.

For each auto_action:

1. Read the check_file path relative to the repo root
2. If the file exists, execute the if_exists instruction
3. If the file is absent, execute the if_absent instruction
4. After all actions, stage changes and commit silently (unless nothing changed)
5. Report what was done in the greeting reply — one line per action with its result

3c. Load user profile

Read the user profile from the memory bus: call readProfile(memoryRoot) (or read <memoryRoot>/profile/<username>/user-profile.json directly). If found, apply any session-relevant preferences (communication style, confidence badge visibility, tool preferences). If absent, continue without — profiles are optional.

Do not report profile loading in the greeting reply unless the profile contains an explicit greeting_note field.

4. Write the session marker

Create /memories/session/greeting-checkin.md with:

# Greeting check-in fired

- date: <ISO date>
- edition_current: <version from marker>
- edition_available: <version reported by upgrade-self>
- announcements_new: <count>

This gates the instruction so it doesn't re-fire mid-session.

Reply Format

Wrap the findings inside a normal greeting response. Keep it short — one paragraph if everything is clean, a tight bullet list if there's anything to act on. Examples:

All clean:

Hey! Edition v0.8.0 is current and AI-Memory has no new announcements. What are we working on?

Update available:

Hi! Quick check-in: Edition v0.9.0 shipped (minor bump from v0.8.0). One new announcement in AI-Memory: "Brain-qa workflow update". Run /upgrade when you've got a moment. What's on the agenda?

Major bump:

Morning. Heads up — Edition v1.0.0 is out, which is a major bump from v0.8.0. Read the release notes before running /upgrade --allow-major. AI-Memory has 2 new announcements I'll list if you want. Where do you want to start?

Failure Modes

Failure	Behaviour
upgrade-self.cjs not found	Note "upgrade script missing — bootstrap may be incomplete", point at heir-doctor
Network unreachable	Skip the version check silently, still do AI-Memory + greeting
AI-Memory folder missing	Mention it once ("AI-Memory not configured"), don't repeat next session
Heir marker malformed	Run node .github/skills/greeting-checkin/scripts/heir-doctor.cjs and report what it says

Falsifiability

This skill is decorative if, after 30 days of typical use, the user reports that:

• Greeting check-ins fire on non-greetings (false positives), or
• The reply text adds friction the user works around by skipping greetings, or
• Real Edition releases ship without the heir surfacing them within the first session after release

Re-evaluate at the 30-day mark; tune the recogniser or the reply format accordingly.

Related

• greeting-checkin.instructions.md — the activation trigger (fires on session greeting)
• checkin.prompt.md — manual invocation
• upgrade.prompt.md — the action to take when an update is available
• welcome.prompt.md — first-session orientation (different audience)