autobahn

name	autobahn
description	Ship a northstar handoff's goals in an ai-catapult-init repo — ultragoal one-PR-per-goal, deterministic engine-pick, peer review, CI gate, fail-closed merge, cascade closure.
eval	autobahn

Autobahn

Autobahn drives a northstar A→B handoff to shipped code: one PR per sliced goal, each peer-reviewed, CI-green, and merged only under explicit authority. It is a lightweight composer — it delegates to existing engines and skills and never reimplements their loops, merge policy, or cascade logic.

Quick Start

1. Run the prereq gate (fail-closed) against the repo root: bash autobahn/prereq-check.sh --root .
2. Consume the sliced goals from the northstar handoff.
3. For each goal: pick an engine, implement, peer-review, gate CI, decide merge.
4. On merge, cascade-close the goal's issue with a triage status.

Prereq (fail-closed)

Autobahn assumes ai-catapult-init v3 and a valid northstar handoff are present; it never bootstraps either. prereq-check.sh asserts the .ai/ structure exists and a discoverable handoff (manifest optional_branches entry + handoff file) is present, exiting non-zero with guidance otherwise. Do not proceed past a failed prereq. See modules/prereq.md.

Orchestration (ultragoal, one PR per goal)

Delegate to ultragoal for durable, ledger-backed orchestration: consume the sliced goals from the handoff and ship one PR per goal. ultragoal owns the ledger and goal loop; autobahn only feeds it the sliced goals and reads back status. See modules/orchestration.md.

Engine auto-pick + override

Per goal, pick a sub-engine deterministically from the goal record's shape (precedence qa > parallel > persistence > default): ultraqa for QA-heavy goals, ultrawork for parallelizable goals, ralph for persistence-needing goals, team by default. A user --engine <name> override wins over auto-pick.

The override is the first interactive point. If no override is supplied, fall back to the deterministic auto-pick below; to override, pass --engine <name> to autobahn/engine-pick.sh (ultraqa|ultrawork|ralph|team).

See modules/engine-pick.md and autobahn/engine-pick.sh.

Peer-review loop

Each goal's PR runs an architect + code-reviewer + executor loop: the executor implements, architect and reviewer review, and the loop continues until all comments are resolved. Authoring and review stay in separate lanes — never self-approve. See modules/review-loop.md.

CI gate

A PR is mergeable only when remote host CI AND local CI are green and every review comment is resolved (the feedback merge protocol). A red or pending CI run holds the merge. See modules/review-loop.md.

Merge authority (configurable, fail-closed)

Merge authority is a thin adapter over the ai-catapult-init host-policy decision: merge-authority.sh invokes host-policy, consumes its verdict + confirmation_token, and wraps only the fail-closed exit-code contract. Admin-bypass merges only on a host-policy-approved verdict with a valid token; otherwise stop at ready-for-human; a valid token the policy still rejects fails closed. The adapter re-encodes none of host-policy's token regex / admin rule / audit format.

Authorizing a merge is the second interactive point. To authorize, supply the host-policy verdict + token to autobahn/merge-authority.sh; with no authorized verdict the goal stops at ready-for-human. See modules/merge-authority.md.

Cascade issue closure

On merge, delegate to the cascade engine to close the goal's issue idempotently across repos and apply the canonical triage status. Closure is audited and re-runnable without creating duplicates. See modules/cascade-closure.md.

Command surface

autobahn registers as a first-class command in both harnesses under .ai/commands/omx/ and .ai/commands/omc/ using the shared schema northstar designed. See modules/command-surface.md.

Safety rules

• Fail closed: missing prereq, missing handoff, red CI, or unauthorized merge stops with guidance — never silently merge or mutate.
• Compose, never reimplement: delegate every loop, merge policy, and cascade.
• Default merge authority is ready-for-human; admin-bypass only on an explicit, host-policy-approved, valid-token verdict.

References

• modules/prereq.md, modules/orchestration.md, modules/engine-pick.md.
• modules/review-loop.md, modules/merge-authority.md, modules/cascade-closure.md, modules/command-surface.md.