babysit-pr

name	babysit-pr
description	Babysit a PR end-to-end — push the branch, poll CI every 3 minutes, auto-fix red checks, address PR comments via validation, then alert (or auto-merge with --auto-approve) when ready. Use this whenever a user says 'babysit this PR', 'watch the CI', '/babysit-pr', wants a PR shepherded to merge, or wants CI failures auto-fixed in a loop.

babysit-pr

Push the current branch, poll CI on a 3-minute cron, auto-resolve red CI and unresolved PR comments, then either alert the user or auto-merge depending on the --auto-approve flag. The loop runs until the PR is merged, the PR is closed, or the user cancels the cron.

This skill is procedural — every invocation does one tick of work, then re-arms itself via a direct CronCreate call. The same skill body handles the first tick (push + tick + arm cron) and every subsequent cron-fired tick (tick only). Do not wrap this in /loop — /loop calls CronCreate on every fire, which would spawn duplicate crons. Call CronCreate directly from this skill with /babysit-pr --pr <N> [other flags] as the fired prompt, and dedupe via CronList (see "Pre-flight" step 1).

Arguments

Parse $ARGUMENTS for these flags:

Flag	Effect
--auto-approve	When CI is green and comments are resolved, run gh pr merge --squash --delete-branch without waiting. Without this flag, alert the user and stop the cron — they merge manually.
--pr <N>	Target a specific PR number. Default: infer from current branch via gh pr view.
--interval <Nm>	Override the 3-minute cadence. Default: 3m.

If no arguments are provided, treat as babysit-pr with defaults (no auto-approve, infer PR, 3-minute cadence).

First-tick vs cron-fired tick

Both ticks share the same procedure below; the only difference is whether to do pre-flight (push, ensure PR) and whether to arm a new cron at the end. Detect which one this is at the start of every invocation:

1. Resolve the target PR number:

   • If --pr <N> was passed, use it.
   • Otherwise: gh pr view --json number 2>/dev/null from the current branch. If no PR exists yet, this is unambiguously a first tick — do pre-flight.

2. Call CronList and look for an active cron whose prompt starts with /babysit-pr and includes --pr <N> for the resolved PR. If found, this is a cron-fired tick — skip pre-flight, run the per-tick procedure, do not arm another cron.

3. If no matching cron is found, this is the first tick — run pre-flight, then the per-tick procedure, then arm a cron (step "Arm the cron" below).

Pre-flight (first tick only)

1. Identify the PR.

   • git status -sb to see the branch.
   • gh pr view --json number,headRefName,state to confirm the branch has an open PR.
   • If no PR exists: push the branch first (git push -u origin <branch>), then gh pr create --fill (use --draft if the user requested it).

2. Refuse to start with a dirty tree. A babysitter is autonomous — it cannot pause to ask "should I commit these unrelated edits?" mid-cron-fire. If git status -sb shows uncommitted changes on the first tick, refuse to arm the cron and tell the user to commit, stash, or discard them first. This is the only interactive guardrail; everything after this point runs unattended.

3. Push committed-but-unpushed changes. If git log @{u}.. shows local commits ahead of origin, push them with git push --force-with-lease (--force-with-lease is critical — pure --force can silently clobber a teammate's push to the same branch).

Arm the cron (first tick only, after the per-tick procedure runs)

If the PR is not yet merged or closed at the end of the first tick, arm the cron via CronCreate:

• cron: */3 * * * * (or whatever was parsed from --interval)
• prompt: /babysit-pr --pr <N> <other flags verbatim> — embed the PR number even if the user didn't pass --pr explicitly, so CronList dedup works deterministically across multiple babysat PRs.
• recurring: true

Confirm to the user: cron ID, the 7-day auto-expiry, the cancel command (CronDelete <id>), and that the loop dies when this Claude session closes — the cron is session-only and not persisted to disk, so closing the terminal mid-PR will leave the branch un-merged until babysit-pr is restarted. Do not wrap the prompt in /loop — the loop skill calls CronCreate on every fire, which would spawn duplicate crons each tick.

Per-tick procedure

Every tick — first or cron-fired — runs this procedure in order. Each step short-circuits the rest of the tick if it succeeds.

1. Refresh PR state

gh pr view <N> --json state,mergeable,mergeStateStatus,statusCheckRollup,reviewDecision
gh pr checks <N>

Capture: PR state, all check conclusions, and any unresolved review comments (next step). If state is MERGED or CLOSED, skip to "Stop conditions."

2. Address PR comments

Pull both CodeRabbit and human reviewer comments:

gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/<N>/comments --jq '.[] | select(.in_reply_to_id == null)'

For every unresolved comment, validate before applying:

1. Read the comment's diff context and proposed change.
2. Verify the file and lines referenced, check whether the suggested fix is technically correct, and flag wrong-headed suggestions instead of blindly applying them. Do not agree with a comment just because a reviewer stated it confidently.
3. Only if validation confirms the comment is correct, apply the fix surgically (small, targeted edit — never rewrite a file because of one comment).
4. Resolve the thread:
   • CodeRabbit: use the coderabbit:autofix skill (optional companion — see README) which knows the per-thread approval flow.
   • Human reviewer: gh api graphql -f query='mutation { resolveReviewThread(input: {threadId: "<id>"}) { thread { isResolved } } }'. Get the threadId via gh api graphql -f query='{ repository(owner:"X",name:"Y") { pullRequest(number:N) { reviewThreads(first:50) { nodes { id isResolved comments(first:1){nodes{databaseId}} } } } } }'.
5. If validation finds the comment is wrong, post a reply explaining why instead of applying — don't silently ignore. Use gh api -X POST repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/<N>/comments/<comment-id>/replies -f body='<one-paragraph rebuttal citing the file/line evidence that contradicts the suggestion>' and then resolve the thread with the same resolveReviewThread mutation as above. The reply IS the resolution rationale — don't leave it as an open thread.

After applying any comment fixes: stage, commit (fix(review): address <reviewer> feedback), git push --force-with-lease. Bail out of this tick early — CI will re-run on the new SHA, so checking it now is wasted.

3. Triage CI status

If no comments needed addressing, look at statusCheckRollup:

State	Action
Any check IN_PROGRESS or QUEUED	Report what's still pending and which checks are green. Stop the tick — the cron will fire again.
All checks SUCCESS	Move to "Merge or alert."
Any check FAILURE	Move to "Auto-fix red CI."

4. Auto-fix red CI

When a check has failed, the design intent is "loop until fixed, no retry cap" — iterate until green:

1. Pull the failing job's logs:

   gh run view <run-id> --log-failed
   

2. Diagnose the root cause from the log. Don't guess — read the actual error. If the failure is non-obvious, read the logs more carefully before applying a guess-fix.
3. Apply a surgical fix to the failing code (small, targeted change — no rearchitecting, no scaffolding-deletes).
4. Verify locally before pushing — run the same command CI runs (e.g. npm test, npm run typecheck, cargo check). Skipping local verification just burns CI minutes.
5. Commit (fix(ci): <one-line reason>) and git push --force-with-lease.
6. Bail out of the tick. The next cron fire will re-check on the new SHA.

No retry cap — if the same fix attempt fails repeatedly, apply a better fix (read the log harder, diagnose more carefully), not a circuit breaker. The user cancels the loop manually with CronDelete <id> if they want to step in.

5. Merge or alert

CI is green and no unresolved comments remain. Branch on --auto-approve:

• --auto-approve set: gh pr merge <N> --squash --delete-branch. Confirm the merge SHA. Then go to "Stop conditions."
• --auto-approve unset: Send a notification via your configured notification channel (check .claude/babysit-pr.local.md for the channel — see README). Message: "PR # '' is green and clean — ready to merge. Run gh pr merge <N> --squash --delete-branch or say 'merge it'." Then go to "Stop conditions."

6. Stop conditions

After a merge, after the user is alerted, or after the PR is closed externally:

1. Find the babysit-pr cron via CronList.
2. CronDelete <id> to stop the loop.
3. Print a one-line summary so the cron-fire trace ends cleanly.

Output format

Each tick should end with a brief summary. Examples:

Pending tick:

CHANGE: None this tick.
VERIFY: gh pr checks → 3/5 green; build-sidecar + lint-test still in_progress.
STATUS: Two checks left; next tick in ~3 min.

Red-CI tick:

CHANGE: Fixed lint-test failure in src/utils/validator.ts:42 (no-non-null-assertion); pushed abc1234.
VERIFY: Local typecheck clean; unit tests 11/11 pass; force-with-lease push succeeded.
STATUS: New SHA in flight — CI re-running, next tick in ~3 min.

Merge tick (auto-approve):

CHANGE: PR #42 squash-merged; cron cancelled; branch deleted on remote.
VERIFY: gh pr view → MERGED; merge SHA abc1234.
STATUS: Shipped.

Gotchas

1. Force-with-lease only. Never git push --force from inside this loop — a teammate's concurrent push would be silently overwritten. --force-with-lease aborts safely if origin moved.
2. Don't disable hooks. Never use --no-verify to skip pre-commit hooks even if they're slow. If a hook fails, fix the underlying issue.
3. Refuse to start with a dirty tree. Pre-flight aborts on uncommitted changes. The skill only commits files it itself modified during a tick (CI fixes, comment-applied fixes), never pre-existing unrelated edits.
4. One open babysit-pr cron at a time per PR. Dedup via CronList matched against --pr <N> in the arming prompt. Multiple crons for the same PR = duplicate ticks = forced-push race conditions where two ticks try to commit fixes for the same red CI run simultaneously.
5. CodeRabbit comments are nested replies. Use in_reply_to_id == null to fetch only top-level threads, not the replies under them. Resolving the parent resolves the children.
6. Validate before applying reviewer comments. The validation step exists specifically to prevent performative agreement with reviewer comments that are wrong. Always check file/lines and whether the suggested fix is actually correct before applying — even when CodeRabbit looks confident. A wrong fix that ships is worse than a comment that stays open.
7. Stop the cron on terminal states. Merged, closed, and "alerted (no auto-approve)" are all terminal. Forgetting to CronDelete means the loop keeps firing after the user has moved on.