| name | overnight |
| description | Plan and launch autonomous overnight development sessions. Selects eligible backlog features, presents a session plan for approval, and hands off to the runner for unattended execution. Use when user says "/overnight", "start overnight session", "launch overnight", or wants to run features autonomously overnight. |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
| inputs | ["time-limit: string (optional) — Maximum wall-clock duration for the overnight session (e.g. '6h'). Passed as --time-limit to the runner."] |
| outputs | ["cortex/lifecycle/sessions/{SESSION_ID}/overnight-plan.md — selected session plan with feature list","cortex/lifecycle/sessions/{SESSION_ID}/overnight-state.json — execution state for the runner","cortex/lifecycle/sessions/{SESSION_ID}/session.json — session manifest (type, id, started, features)","cortex/lifecycle/sessions/{SESSION_ID}/overnight-events.log — session events log","cortex/lifecycle/sessions/{SESSION_ID}/morning-report.md — session morning report","cortex/lifecycle/sessions/latest-overnight — symlink to the current session directory"] |
| preconditions | ["cortex/lifecycle/{slug}/spec.md exists for each candidate feature","cortex/backlog/NNN-slug.md files exist with status: refined","Run from project root"] |
Overnight Session Planning
Interactive entry point for overnight autonomous orchestration — guides the user through selecting features from the backlog, reviewing a session plan, and launching execution. The skill handles planning and approval; execution is delegated to the runner.
For the canonical round-loop and orchestrator behavior the runner implements after launch, see docs/overnight-operations.md.
References
Detailed step procedures, worked examples, and success-criteria checklists are extracted to references:
Read only the reference for the flow you are in. Do not preload all references.
Invocation
/overnight -- start a new overnight session (select features, build plan, launch)/overnight resume -- resume an interrupted overnight session or view results/overnight status -- check the status of a running or recent overnight session
Input Validation
Validate before entering any flow:
| Check | Requirement | Error Response |
|---|
time-limit | matches \d+(\.\d+)?h (e.g., 6h, 1.5h) | "Invalid time-limit format '{value}'. Expected hours, e.g. '6h'." → stop |
| Git repository | .git/ exists in the cwd | "Not a git repository root. Run /overnight from the repository root." → stop |
| Backlog directory | cortex/backlog/ exists | "No backlog directory found. Run from the project root." → stop |
| Command variant | one of overnight, overnight resume, overnight status | "Unknown subcommand '{variant}'. Use /overnight, /overnight resume, or /overnight status." → stop |
New Session Flow (/overnight)
Read ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/new-session-flow.md and follow it (full protocol, error handling, sub-steps, function signatures) — check for an existing session, regenerate the backlog index, select eligible features, present the selection, render the plan, run the unified plan + spec review to approval, then launch (pre-flight, bootstrap, batch-spec commit, dashboard, run-now/schedule split — session_start is logged only on the run-now branch; the runner is the sole fire-time author otherwise).
Resume Flow (/overnight resume)
Read ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/resume-flow.md and follow it (full protocol) — load existing state, report session status, surface deferred questions, then act on the phase-appropriate next step.
Status Flow (/overnight status)
Run overnight-status (the deployed script) and present its output to the user. If the command is not found, instruct the user to install the cortex-core plugin.
Success Criteria
Detailed checklists for /overnight and /overnight resume outcomes live in ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/success-criteria.md. The high-level shape:
- New session: plan, state, and manifest written into
cortex/lifecycle/sessions/{session_id}/; integration branch created; runner launched; session_start logged.
- Resume: state reported; deferred questions surfaced; phase-appropriate next action offered.
Output Format Examples
Templates for overnight-plan.md and session.json live in ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/output-format-examples.md.
Overnight vs Pipeline vs Lifecycle
Complementary orchestration skills: Lifecycle (/lifecycle) is interactive single-feature development, user present throughout. Pipeline (/pipeline) is batch orchestration — interactive front-end (research, spec, plan), autonomous execution back-end. Overnight (/overnight) is fully autonomous execution of features whose research and spec artifacts already exist (from /discovery or /lifecycle) — no interactive research/spec phase; handles plan approval, then hands off entirely to the runner.
Constraints
- Protocol only, no implementation code. References functions by module path:
cortex_command.overnight.{backlog,plan,state,events,deferral}.
- One overnight session at a time — an active (non-complete) session must be resumed or abandoned before starting a new one.
- Features must have
research.md and spec.md on disk and must not be type: epic (eligibility detail in new-session-flow.md Step 3). Missing plan.md is generated during the session — a plan sub-agent runs before dispatch and defers the feature (with a reason) if it cannot produce one.
- The skill does not execute features. It creates the plan and state, then hands off to the runner.
- Overnight features merge to the session's integration branch (
overnight/{session_id}), not directly to main. The runner opens a single PR to main at session end covering all changes.
- Session plan is immutable after approval — once written to
overnight-plan.md, it does not change. Runtime state lives in overnight-state.json.
- Parallel agent dispatch uses
Agent isolation: "worktree". Same-repo worktrees resolve to <repo>/.claude/worktrees/{feature}/ via cortex-worktree-resolve — repo-relative, under the project's trust scope, no per-shell sandbox registration needed. The .mcp.json sandbox deny is filename-scoped and does not block git worktree add. A failed checkout leaves an orphaned branch — clean up with git branch -d <name> before retrying.
