| name | edit-in-emacs |
| description | Open a draft in emacsclient (blocking) so the user can review or edit it before further action. Triggers: /edit-in-emacs, 'open in emacs', 'open in emacsclient', 'let me edit', 'edit before submitting', 'open it in emacs and let me edit' |
| user_invocable | true |
Edit in Emacs
Use this skill when the user wants to manually review or edit a draft (commit message, PR body, Jira description, prompt, etc.) before it is submitted or used downstream.
Workflow
-
Write the draft to a temp file under /tmp/.
- Pick a descriptive filename, e.g.
/tmp/jira-<topic>.md, /tmp/pr-body.md, /tmp/commit-msg.txt.
- If the draft has multiple structured parts (e.g. summary + body), separate them with a clear marker like a line
SUMMARY: ... followed by ---, and tell the user about the convention.
-
Open the file with blocking emacsclient:
emacsclient /tmp/<file>
- Do not use
-n — blocking is the whole point. The Bash call returns only after the user does C-x # (server-edit) in Emacs.
- Pass
timeout: 600000 (10 min) on the Bash tool call so it does not abort while the user is editing.
-
After the Bash call returns, the edited file is on disk.
- The harness usually emits a system-reminder showing the diff of any changes — use that if it is present.
- If no diff was shown (e.g. user did not modify the file, or the change is large), Read the file to get the current contents.
-
Use the edited contents in the downstream action (jira create, gh pr create, commit, etc.). Do not re-prompt the user for the same content; trust their edits.
Notes
- The user must have
emacs --daemon (or a running GUI Emacs server) for emacsclient to attach. If emacsclient reports can't find socket, fall back to telling the user and offer $EDITOR instead.
- Keep the temp file under
/tmp/, never in the repo root.
- If the user explicitly asks for a different editor, honour that and skip this skill.
- The skill is for interactive editing of a draft, not for opening existing source files — for those, just
Read them.
