| name | advance-card |
| description | Mutate a card's status (everything except done — that is finish-card's job), record relationship edges, or set the goc wait impediment overlay. AUTO-INVOKE on "I'll start on X", "mark this disproved", "supersede with Z", "make this depend on Y". If the catalog location path is unreadable, fetch the body via the goc tool verb "skill", args ["advance-card"]. |
When to invoke
Invoke when the user says "I'll start on X", "I'm working on", "mark this disproved", "supersede with Z", "this is part of X", "make this depend on Y", "these should be linked", "should this be an edge or a tag?", "remove this dependency", "unlink these", or describes any non-done status change or relationship-modeling intent. For "this is blocked by Y" / "unblock", set or clear the impediment overlay with goc wait (Step 6) instead of flipping status. Status transitions and relationship edges are documented agreements (Kanban explicit policies, Anderson).
Advance a card
Every status transition is a documented agreement, not a silent flag
flip — the reason lives on disk: in the body for terminal
transitions, in the commit message for mid-flight ones. Mutate a
card's status — everything except done, which is
the finish-card skill's DoD-gated contract. Read the card first to
confirm the transition is legal, then run the matching CLI.
Edge cases live in reference.md — a sibling file in this
skill's directory. Read the named section only when the situation
actually applies:
| Situation | reference.md section |
|---|
| Flipping to disproved / superseded (required body work) | Terminal transitions |
| "Should this be an edge or a tag?" / coordinating cards | Edge vs tag |
A recorded advances edge turns out false | Retraction |
| Worker assignment and queue filtering | Worker field |
A legacy status: blocked card | Deprecated blocked status |
| Why transitions are explicit policies | Rationale |
Optional argument — <title> <new-status> [--by <other-title>].
Step 1 — read the card
Run goc show <title> yourself with the real title bound. Confirm:
- Current status matches the transition (e.g.
open → active
requires current open).
- The
human_gate fits the move. Flipping a session-gated card to
active autonomously is a stop — that needs the human in the loop.
- For
disproved / superseded, the body documents the rebuttal /
replacement BEFORE you flip (reference.md § Terminal
transitions).
status, human_gate, and the impediment overlay (waiting_on +
waiting_until) are orthogonal axes — a card may be active AND
carry waiting_on: external (see the card-schema skill "Three-axis
stuck model"). The legacy status: blocked is deprecated; set the
overlay (Step 6) or rely on derived readiness instead
(reference.md § Deprecated blocked status).
Step 2 — match the transition to the CLI
| transition | CLI | notes |
|---|
open → active | goc status <title> active | "claiming" the card; also clears draft: true |
active → open | goc status <title> open | release the claim (re-queue) when stepping away mid-flight without disproving the work |
* → open | goc status <title> open | re-queue (rare) |
* → disproved | goc status <title> disproved | populate rebuttal first; CLI stamps closed_at |
* → superseded | goc status <title> superseded --by <successor> | sets the typed superseded_by / supersedes link bidirectionally; CLI stamps closed_at |
- To release an authored draft to the queue without claiming it:
goc publish <title>. A draft cannot be moved to superseded /
disproved — a title-only scaffold has no authored scope to judge
(see the card-schema skill "Draft").
- Parking on an external wait is the overlay's job (Step 6), never a
status flip; a human-judgement wait raises
human_gate instead.
- An
advanced_by prereq that is still open needs NO status change —
derived dependency-readiness shows it and self-clears when the
prereq closes.
Step 3 — populate the two writing surfaces
Each transition routes writing to the README dashboard (rewrite in
place) and/or the log.md journal (append):
| Transition | README dashboard | log.md journal |
|---|
open → active | no change required | optional; the claim commit usually suffices |
set / clear waiting_on | update the affected section to reflect the wait / its resolution | append: what the wait is for and the expected return signal / what changed |
* → open (re-queue) | rewrite sections no longer accurate | append: why re-queued |
* → disproved | rewrite body to document the rebuttal | append: when disproved, by what evidence |
* → superseded | leave body as the historical record | append: successor link + one-line why |
Rule of thumb: state-of-the-world updates rewrite the README;
transition narrative, decisions, and timestamps append to log.md
(see the card-schema skill "What goes where"). The required body
content for disproved (hypothesis / verdict / source of error) and
superseded (typed link, journal rationale, no README rewrite) is
specified in reference.md § Terminal transitions — read it before
your first terminal flip.
Step 4 — run the transition
goc status <title> active
goc advance <title> --by <other>
goc unadvance <title> --by <other>
goc status <title> disproved
goc status <title> superseded --by <successor-title>
The CLI prints <title>: <prior> → <new> on success and follows the
repo's .game-of-cards/config.yaml workflow.auto_commit policy.
Step 5 — claim is its own commit
Status flips and edge mutations commit immediately, separately from
the work commit, so a sibling branch pulling sees status: active
before it races on the same YAML. --no-commit skips once;
--commit forces a state-only commit when the repo config disables
auto-commit. If the commit is skipped (no repo, mid-merge, no diff),
the CLI prints a note — the on-disk state still mutated.
Step 6 — set or clear an impediment overlay (goc wait)
For exogenous waits the dependency graph cannot see: external
(vendor / third party), resource (person or skill unavailable),
deferred (calendar-postponed).
goc wait <title> --reason external --until 2026-06-15
goc wait <title> --until 2026-06-15
goc wait <title> --reason resource
goc wait <title> --clear
A future waiting_until (or a reason with no date) hides the card
from --ready / next-card / pull-card and re-enters it automatically
when the date passes; an elapsed date is surfaced by goc validate
as WAITING_OVERDUE. The overlay is orthogonal to status.
Edge vs tag (short form)
- Same value chain — closing the source delivers a piece of the
target's value →
advances edge: goc advance <title> --by <other> (maintains both sides atomically; half-edges are
validator errors; cycles forbidden).
- Same theme, no closure dependency — a future filter would want
them grouped → shared tag, no edge.
- One card coordinates many — aggregation epic (closes when its
children close) →
child.advances: [epic]; governing cluster
(closes when decided) → shared tag, NO edge; never
epic.advances: [children] (BACKWARDS_EPIC_EDGE). The tell: a
coordinator that closes on its own deliverable is a governing
cluster.
At filing time, goc new <child> --advances <epic> --commit wires
both sides in one atomic commit. Full decision procedure, the
value-law reasoning, and the retraction contract: reference.md
§ Edge vs tag and § Retraction.
Worker field
goc status <title> active auto-populates worker with the current
identity at claim time. Free-form: flat string (worker: rodja) or
mapping (worker: {who: rodja, where: feature/foo}). Filter queue
views with goc --worker <X> or the GOC_WORKER env var. Details:
reference.md § Worker field.
Cross-references
reference.md (this skill's directory) — edge cases routed in the
table above.- the
finish-card skill — done transitions (DoD-gated).
- the
card-schema skill — transition semantics, edge invariants,
human_gate rules.
- the
create-card skill — when a supersession needs a new card to
point at.
Sibling files on this host
This skill ships reference.md alongside its body. If a direct file read fails (sandboxed sessions cannot see the plugin install path), fetch the file through the goc tool: {verb: "skill", args: ["advance-card", "<file>"]}.
