| name | kanmer-closeout |
| description | Close out a verified Done ticket or an explicitly retired post-merge verification failure — confirm proof.md and disposition are final, record traceability, then remove the worktree, delete the branch, and release so nothing stale accumulates. Use after kanmer-verify's success or terminal-retirement handoff. DO NOT USE FOR deciding whether the work is good, verifying it, or inventing a failure disposition. |
Closing out a Kanmer ticket
Closeout is what stops the two slow leaks: tickets that sit taken forever,
and worktrees/branches that outlive their PR. It runs in a fixed order —
kanmer record-keeping first, git cleanup second, release dead last —
because proof evidence may still need the worktree alive, a git snag must
not strand the board, and a lingering ⛏ badge on a done ticket is a visible
prompt to finish cleanup, unlike a silently orphaned directory.
Start by appending assets/closeout-checklist.md to the ticket's
checklist.md (set_ticket_doc append: true) so the human watches cleanup
progress live.
0. Gate: is the PR actually merged?
gh pr view <branch> --json state,mergedAt,url
Proceed only on state: "MERGED". OPEN → not a closeout; stop and say so.
CLOSED without merge → the abandoned path below.
1. Kanmer half
The ticket is in exactly one accepted terminal shape:
- verified success — status Done, not archived, final proof result
PASS; or
- retired non-success — status Verifying, archived, final proof result is
not
PASS, and the Outcome names the operator's irrecoverable/superseded
reason plus a successor ticket or explicit no-successor disposition.
Reject every other shape. Closeout never decides that a failure is terminal,
archives it, moves it to Done, or changes its proof result. Those decisions and
evidence belong to kanmer-verify and the operator.
- Confirm
proof.md is final (get_ticket_doc doc: "proof"); append the PR
URL and merge date if verify didn't.
- Record traceability (
update_item with expected_updated): commits
(the merged SHAs), prs (the merged PR ref), and — if the board tracks
deployment — set deployment (n/a for non-deployable work, not-deployed,
or the environment it shipped to). CI auto-detection is out of scope; set it
from what actually happened.
- Record the Outcome in the ticket body's Outcome section: follow-up ticket
ids and anything that shipped differently than planned. For retired
non-success, preserve the operator, reason, proof result and successor or
explicit no-successor disposition verbatim.
2. Git half
The board's own worktree is not yours to remove. In a repo set up through
the GUI the board lives in .worktrees/kanmer on the board branch, and MCP is
rooted there — every command in this section takes the ticket's worktree and
branch, the ones take_ticket recorded on the ticket. Read them off get_item
rather than globbing .worktrees/*; removing .worktrees/kanmer destroys the
checkout the board is being served from.
cd "$(git worktree list --porcelain | head -1 | cut -c 10-)"
git worktree remove .worktrees/<id>
git branch -d <id>-<slug>
git fetch --prune origin
git worktree prune
If the host repo doesn't auto-delete merged branches:
git push origin --delete <id>-<slug>.
3. Release, last
take_ticket action: "release" — issued only once nothing is actually in
flight. Success stays Done; retired non-success stays archived in Verifying.
In both cases Git shows nothing left and the live board has no stale taken work.
Edge cases
| Case | Do this |
|---|
PR still OPEN | Not a closeout. Stop, tell the user, touch nothing — the ticket stays taken in review. |
PR CLOSED without merge | Never move to the final stage. Ask the user: rework (leave everything, move the ticket back a stage) or abandon (append why to checklist.md, then the abandoned-cleanup below). |
| Abandoning: worktree dirty / branch unmerged | Show the user git -C .worktrees/<id> status --porcelain and the unmerged commits before any --force / -D. Only after they confirm it's disposable: git worktree remove --force, git branch -D, release, then archive or re-stage the ticket per the user. |
git worktree remove refuses (dirty) on a merged PR | That's the safety working. Commit-and-push or stash anything that matters to the branch first; --force only for confirmed-disposable output (build artifacts) after showing the user what's there. |
git branch -d refuses ("not fully merged") | Expected after a squash- or rebase-merge — the PR's commits aren't ancestors of main. Because step 0 verified MERGED, git branch -D is safe in that case only. If merge state couldn't be verified (no gh, no network), don't -D; leave the branch and flag it. |
| You're standing inside the worktree | You can't delete the directory you're in (Windows holds the cwd handle). The cd to the main checkout is step one of the git half precisely for this. |
| Pausing, not closing (work will resume) | Append the resume point (branch + worktree path) to checklist progress notes, release the ticket, and keep the worktree and branch — see kanmer-execute's pausing section. |
| Worktree recorded on the ticket but gone on disk | git worktree list: registered but missing → git worktree prune; directory lingering but unregistered → plain rm -rf of the leftover dir. Either way continue normally — a missing worktree is just less to clean. |
No successor — this is the end of the pipeline. The ticket is either Done
with PASS or archived in Verifying with an explicit non-success disposition;
the worktree and branch are gone, and the ticket is released. If closeout produced
follow-up work, that is a new ticket via kanmer-tickets, starting again at
Backlog; it is not a continuation of this one. Control returns to whoever was
driving — often kanmer-auto, which counts this ticket as finished and moves to
the next in its roster.
