whip

---

name: whip description: Unified whip skill. Verbs — run (autonomous-work nudge loop, default), cadence (tune re-arm interval), watchdog (liveness one-shot). Use /atmux:whip or /loop /atmux:whip for the main loop. argument-hint: [run | cadence <slow|fast|default|status|N> | watchdog [team]]

/atmux:whip — unified autonomous-work skill

Single entry point for the three whip surfaces:

• run (default, bare) — autonomous-work nudge loop. Fires ~5 min after last user input, dispatches, escalates real blockers, re-arms.
• cadence <args> — tune the re-arm interval per-team.
• watchdog [team] — manual one-shot liveness check (primary path is cron, not this slash command).

Dispatch is on the first argument. Empty args → run (this preserves the /loop /atmux:whip contract). Unknown first arg → print usage + exit.

Verb dispatch

case "${1:-run}" in
  run)            ;;   # main loop turn — see §Run
  cadence)        ;;   # re-arm override — see §Cadence
  watchdog)       ;;   # liveness one-shot — see §Watchdog
  help|--help|-h) echo "Usage: /atmux:whip [run | cadence <slow|fast|default|status|N> | watchdog [team]]"; exit 0 ;;
  *)              echo "Unknown verb '$1'. Usage: /atmux:whip [run | cadence <args> | watchdog [team]]"; exit 1 ;;
esac

---

§Run — main loop turn (default)

Autonomous-work nudge. Fires every N seconds (default 270s; overridable via cadence). Tells the lead to continue working, make judgment calls, and only escalate real blockers.

Dual-harness: this is the Claude Code entry point; OpenCode runs the same logic via WhipMonitor in opencode-plugin-orch (src/core/whip-monitor.ts), which reads the same whip-prompt.md so both harnesses behave identically.

How to run

• Start: /loop /atmux:whip — dynamic mode. The skill self-paces via ScheduleWakeup at the end of each turn, reading cadence from ~/.claude/teams/${TEAM}/whip-cadence.txt (fallback 270s).
• Stop: reply stop on the next whip turn, or exit the session.
• Restart after /clear: /loop /atmux:whip again.

Instructions

Each time this skill fires in run mode, do the following. Keep the response terse — goal is action, not narration.

1. Load the shared prompt. Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/atmux}/skills/whip/whip-prompt.md and follow it verbatim. It is the single source of truth for whip behaviour (shared with the OpenCode harness).

2. Check for .claude/team.json in the current cwd. If absent, exit cleanly — whip is a no-op without a team.

3. Execute the prompt. Do the team check, dispatch/unblock work, make judgment calls. Do NOT stop and wait for the user.

   Eternal-improvement fallback (operator directive 2026-05-20): if the team check finds zero work to dispatch/unblock AND zero pending claims AND every member is genuinely idle (not paused / not rate-limited / not mid-rotation), trigger one cycle of /atmux:bruh §0.7 — file ONE [improve P3] task per the heuristics there (tech-debt grep / ADR §OQ / coverage gap / aged doctor warn / lint sweep / stale memory). Do NOT lengthen the cadence yet — let §Cadence's adaptive slow-down fire only if the team STAYS idle after the improvement-task injection. Skip the fallback if operator freeze is in lead's driver-inbox last 24h. This replaces the legacy "idle = slow down" reflex with "idle = generate self-directed work".

4. Escalate only real blockers. If and only if a blocker needs user input (credentials, ambiguous product decision, external access), call:

   bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/atmux}/skills/whip/scripts/ping-discord.sh" "🚨 **[whip-blocker]** · \`$TEAM\` · $(TZ='${COORDINATION_TZ:-${user_config.COORDINATION_TZ}}' date +'%H:%M ${COORDINATION_TZ_SUFFIX:-${user_config.COORDINATION_TZ_SUFFIX}}')
   

<what's blocked> — — <what's needed>"

Format rule: emoji + bold bracket-tag + `·` separators + ${COORDINATION_TZ_SUFFIX:-${user_config.COORDINATION_TZ_SUFFIX}} timestamp. Body below header with blank line. Grep-tag (`[whip-blocker]`) stays inside the bold so Discord search still hits it.

Healthy state = no Discord ping. The user should only be paged when you genuinely need them.

5. **Re-arm.** At the end of the turn, read cadence from `~/.claude/teams/${TEAM}/whip-cadence.txt` (fallback 270 if missing/invalid; clamp to [60, 3600]), then call:

ScheduleWakeup(delaySeconds: ${CADENCE}, prompt: "<>", reason: "whip re-arm")

**Default 270s, not 300s.** 270s stays inside the 5-min prompt-cache TTL. 300s crosses the TTL boundary — cache miss. Per `ScheduleWakeup` docs: "drop to 270s (stay in cache) or commit to 1200s+".

**Override via `/atmux:whip cadence`** (see §Cadence). Don't lengthen unilaterally — Discord-flush and team-log cadences assume 270s firing rate during active work.

### §Run notes

- **Timer reset on user input**: Claude Code resets implicitly — a new user turn ends the current loop cycle; the next whip fires after the next `/loop` turn end. No code needed.
- **Not a daemon**: whip dies with the session. `/clear` or exit kills the loop. Re-arm with `/loop /atmux:whip` if you want it back.
- **Discord flush window is separate**: `[whip-progress]` batches team-log delta over a 15-min window. That's a batching boundary inside the whip prompt, NOT the re-arm cadence.
- **Discord helper degrades gracefully**: if `DISCORD_WHIP_WEBHOOK` secret isn't in Infisical `/shared`, the script logs a warning and exits 0; the whip still does team-check work.

---

## §Cadence — tune re-arm interval

`/atmux:whip run` re-arms via `ScheduleWakeup(delaySeconds: N)` each turn. This verb flips `N` per-team at runtime. **Default is adaptive** — 270s while team is active, auto-slows to 3600s after 3 consecutive idle turns, auto-snaps back to 270s on the next active turn. No config needed for this; `/atmux:whip cadence` only matters when you want to override the adaptive behavior.

### Sub-verbs

| Sub-verb | Writes | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| `fast` / `default` / `auto` | delete file (restore default) | **adaptive** — 270s active, 3600s after 3 idle turns, snaps back on activity |
| `slow` | `3600` | **locked at 1 hour** — overrides adaptive; stays slow even during active work |
| `<N>` (integer seconds) | `N` (clamped to [60, 3600]) | **locked at N** — overrides adaptive |
| `status` | read-only | — prints current mode + value |

**Adaptive vs locked:**
- `auto` / `fast` / `default` / no-file → adaptive (recommended)
- `slow` → locked 3600 (use during rehearsal/live demo when no Discord chatter wanted regardless of team activity)
- `<N>` → locked N (power user)

**Idle-streak state** lives in `~/.claude/teams/{team}/atmux:whip-idle-streak.txt` (integer). Written by whip-prompt.md each turn. Resets to 0 on any active turn. Adaptive mode auto-slows when streak ≥ 3.

### When to slow down

- **Overnight** when team is idle — burning ~300k tokens/hour at 270s cadence for a silent team is waste. At 3600s you still get hourly heartbeat + emergency-signal propagation.
- **Post-demo wind-down** — work shipped, team idle, the user wants to read without chatter.

**Note** (operator directive 2026-05-20): eternal-improvement (`/atmux:bruh §0.7`) fires from `/atmux:whip run` step 3 BEFORE the adaptive slow-down. Real idle (slow-down triggers) only after the fallback runs and STILL finds no work to do. Empty kanban + every improvement-heuristic already filed = legitimate idle. Idle ≠ "nothing to do" — idle = "nothing to do AND nothing to improve".
- **Rate-limit pressure** — slowing the lead's cadence reduces its share of the usage bucket.
- **Demo rehearsal / live demo** — no Discord pings mid-presentation.

### When to restore fast

- **Active demo week** — sub-5-min turnaround between teammate commits matters.
- **Incident response** — faster Discord escalation for real blockers.
- **Any time the team resumes real work** — default is default for a reason.

### Usage

/atmux:whip cadence slow # 3600s — 1 hour cadence /atmux:whip cadence fast # restore 270s default /atmux:whip cadence default # same as fast /atmux:whip cadence 600 # 10 min custom /atmux:whip cadence status # show current

### Implementation

```bash
# Step 0 — resolve team
TEAM="$(jq -r .name .claude/team.json 2>/dev/null || echo '')"
if [ -z "$TEAM" ]; then
  echo "ERROR: no .claude/team.json in $(pwd) — run from a team project root"
  exit 1
fi
CONFIG_DIR="${HOME}/.claude/teams/${TEAM}"
CONFIG_FILE="${CONFIG_DIR}/whip-cadence.txt"
mkdir -p "${CONFIG_DIR}"

# Step 1/2 — parse sub-verb + apply
case "$2" in
  slow)
    echo 3600 > "$CONFIG_FILE"
    echo "✅ /atmux:whip cadence slow — locked at 3600s (manual)"
    ;;
  fast|default|auto)
    rm -f "$CONFIG_FILE"
    rm -f "${CONFIG_DIR}/atmux:whip-idle-streak.txt"   # reset streak so next tick starts at 270
    echo "✅ /atmux:whip cadence $2 — restored adaptive mode (270s active / 3600s after 3 idle turns)"
    ;;
  status)
    STREAK=$(cat "${CONFIG_DIR}/atmux:whip-idle-streak.txt" 2>/dev/null || echo 0)
    if [ -f "$CONFIG_FILE" ]; then
      VAL=$(cat "$CONFIG_FILE")
      case "$VAL" in
        auto|fast|default|"")
          echo "cadence: adaptive (override file says '$VAL'); idle-streak=$STREAK"
          ;;
        *)
          echo "cadence: locked at ${VAL}s (manual override at $CONFIG_FILE); idle-streak=$STREAK"
          ;;
      esac
    else
      if [ "$STREAK" -ge 3 ]; then
        echo "cadence: adaptive → currently slow (idle-streak=$STREAK, re-arm=3600s)"
      else
        echo "cadence: adaptive → currently fast (idle-streak=$STREAK, re-arm=270s)"
      fi
    fi
    ;;
  *)
    if [[ "$2" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
      N=$2
      [[ $N -lt 60 ]]   && N=60
      [[ $N -gt 3600 ]] && N=3600
      echo "$N" > "$CONFIG_FILE"
      echo "✅ /atmux:whip cadence $N — locked at ${N}s (manual)"
    else
      echo "Usage: /atmux:whip cadence <fast|slow|auto|default|status|N-seconds>"
      exit 1
    fi
    ;;
esac

Step 3 — report

Remind the user:

• Next whip tick reads the new value; currently-scheduled wakeup is NOT retroactively changed (fires on old schedule, re-arms on new).
• At ≥3600s, Discord [whip-progress] flushes drop to ~hourly. Don't stay slow during active work.
• Cache-miss cliff at 300s — don't pick values in [301, 1199]. Either ≤270 or ≥1200.

§Cadence warnings

• Team-log / Discord flush cadences assume 270s fires. At 3600s, flushes batch hourly instead of per-15min. Fine overnight, lagging during active work.
• Cache miss cliff at 300s. Skill doesn't enforce the [301, 1199] prohibition; your judgement does.
• No per-role override. Sets one cadence for the whole team's lead-loop.
• Never <60s. ScheduleWakeup's own clamp is [60, 3600]; this skill mirrors it.

§Cadence cross-skill coordination

• /atmux:session cont — if handoff landed under non-default cadence, cont does NOT restore default. File persists. /atmux:whip cadence fast explicitly to restore.
• /atmux:session stop — does NOT delete the file. End-of-day shutdown preserves cadence preference for tomorrow.
• /atmux:team stop — same; file is team-scoped state, survives team restarts.
• whip watchdog — reads the same file when computing stall thresholds (TODO: widen watchdog's 30-min stall heuristic proportionally at ≥3600s; currently still fires at 30min, which is correct — a stalled lead shouldn't be masked by slow cadence).

---

§Watchdog — driver-side liveness check

The primary path is cron (per-team, */10 * * * *). This slash command is the manual one-shot form — useful during active-shipping windows where you want a spot-check between cron ticks.

The canonical implementation lives in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/atmux}/skills/whip/scripts/watchdog.sh. Cron invokes it directly; the path is symlink-stable post-wizard-install — per ADR-217 §D5 the wizard symlinks ~/.claude/plugins/atmux/ → <atmux-source>/plugins/atmux/, so atmux upgrades pick up new script bodies without rewriting the path operators wired into cron.

Why this exists

The lead's /atmux:whip run loop self-reports via Discord. This watchdog exists because /atmux:whip run can fail silently — wedged process, bad compaction, rotation crash. An outside observer pages the user within ~10 min of crossing the 30-min stale threshold. Observed failure mode: a 2h 13min Discord dark period where lead was alive but not firing whip ticks, with nothing outside noticing.

The check is cheap (2 file stats + 1 pane capture + 1 git log --since) and rate-limited (1 alert per hour).

Why cron, not a Claude loop

Mechanical check — no reasoning, no dispatch, no inbox reading. A Claude /loop at 10-min cadence exceeds the 5-min prompt-cache TTL, so every tick is a full cache miss (~$10-20 per driver session in Opus input tokens for zero real work). Cron runs the same logic at zero token cost; the Claude-side stays available only as an on-demand one-shot.

How to run

Cron (primary — per-team, 10min cadence)

Install (one crontab entry per team):

*/10 * * * * bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/atmux}/skills/whip/scripts/watchdog.sh <team-name> >>$HOME/.claude/teams/<team-name>/watchdog.log 2>&1

Verify cron is active: systemctl status cron.

Uninstall:

crontab -l | grep -v whip-watchdog/watchdog.sh | crontab -

Logs:

tail -f ~/.claude/teams/<team-name>/watchdog.log

Manual (one-shot, via this slash command)

/atmux:whip watchdog             # uses team from $(pwd)/.claude/team.json
/atmux:whip watchdog <team>    # explicit team arg

Do NOT invoke on the lead — it runs /atmux:whip run which has its own self-report.

Implementation (manual path)

The script at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/atmux}/skills/whip/scripts/watchdog.sh is the full implementation with all four checks (lead-stall, teammate-blockers, lead-blocker, teammate-uptime-nag). When running this slash command as a one-shot:

# Resolve team — arg overrides .claude/team.json
TEAM="${2:-$(jq -r .name .claude/team.json 2>/dev/null)}"
if [ -z "$TEAM" ] || [ "$TEAM" = "null" ]; then
  echo "ERROR: no team — pass as arg or run from a team project root"
  exit 1
fi

# Delegate to the canonical script — same logic as cron
bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/atmux}/skills/whip/scripts/watchdog.sh" "$TEAM"

§Watchdog — what it checks (4 parallel)

1. Lead-stall — flush file >30min stale with commit/idle carve-outs. Alerts if commits happened but flush didn't fire, or lead stuck mid-turn.
2. Teammate-blocker — any non-lead __{team}__* pane stuck on interactive prompt. Rate-limit 1 alert/hour/member.
3. Lead-blocker — lead pane itself stuck on interactive prompt. Rate-limit 1 alert/15min (tighter — whole-team-blocked).
4. Teammate-uptime-nag — context age past 90min rotation threshold. Prefers member-clear-<name>.txt marker; falls back to process etimes. Consolidated ping per tick (not per-member).

Each check has its own rate-limit file under ~/.claude/teams/<team>/. Full logic in watchdog.sh.

§Watchdog notes

• Not a replacement for /atmux:whip. Watchdog only notices absence of /atmux:whip activity. Positive work happens in run mode.
• Does not touch the team. Pure observation + Discord ping.
• Stale-flush is not itself a stall signal. /atmux:whip's change-gate (§7 of whip-prompt.md) legitimately skips flush during extended idle. Carve-outs filter those out. What fires an alert:
  • Commits in last 30min but flush didn't fire → change-gate should have triggered
  • Lead pane stuck mid-turn (thinking/compacting) → wedged process
  • Lead state unknown → can't confirm healthy, fire for safety
  • Flush file missing and lead up >45min → whip never seeded (crashed bootstrap)
• Rate-limit 1 hour for lead-stall. If lead dies, user gets one ping, not a hundred. After intervention, lead's first run tick touches flush file and watchdog resumes silent.
• Discord helper degrades gracefully — if webhook not configured, script logs warning and exits 0.

---

Migration from old (operator-dotfiles) skill names

These hyphen-form slash commands existed only in operator-dotfiles unification predecessors; they were never bundled. Documented here so operators migrating their muscle memory know the canonical bundled forms:

• /whip-cadence <args> (dotfiles legacy) → /atmux:whip cadence <args>
• /whip-watchdog (dotfiles legacy) → /atmux:whip watchdog [team]
• /whip (dotfiles bare) → /atmux:whip (bundled, equivalent to /atmux:whip run)

Old slash-command entries do not exist in this plugin. The whip/scripts/watchdog.sh script path is preserved under plugins/atmux/skills/whip/scripts/ — cron contracts stay intact.