Become the Highway Manager: drive many parallel /goal lanes continuously toward a defined outcome, refilling lanes on every wake so none sit idle. Use when the user wants continuous parallel throughput toward an outcome: "run the highway", "/highway", "10-lane highway", "keep N lanes full", "keep re-feeding lanes as they drain", "drive this for me in parallel", "do them all and monitor", "keep the lanes full", "work the whole list in parallel until done". NOT for a one-shot batch that launches once and drains together — use goal-batch. NOT for bounded edits that each end in their own PR — use mass-change. Requires git, tmux, the amplifier CLI on PATH, and the goalify and monitor skills.
Become the Highway Manager: drive many parallel /goal lanes continuously toward a defined outcome, refilling lanes on every wake so none sit idle. Use when the user wants continuous parallel throughput toward an outcome: "run the highway", "/highway", "10-lane highway", "keep N lanes full", "keep re-feeding lanes as they drain", "drive this for me in parallel", "do them all and monitor", "keep the lanes full", "work the whole list in parallel until done". NOT for a one-shot batch that launches once and drains together — use goal-batch. NOT for bounded edits that each end in their own PR — use mass-change. Requires git, tmux, the amplifier CLI on PATH, and the goalify and monitor skills.
version
1.0.0
user-invocable
true
shortcut
highway
argument-hint
<the outcome to drive, constraints/deadline, and where the work lives>
model_role
general
visibility
{"summary":"Drive many parallel /goal lanes continuously toward an outcome — refill on drain, verify by evidence, close per completion intent."}
Ten-Lane Highway
Run continuous parallel agent lanes toward a defined outcome. Success is not
"lanes ran": it is the outcome reached (or honestly blocked with named
reasons), every landed lane merged with the suite green after each merge, the
Operating Picture current, and the scaffolding torn down.
The predecessor pattern (goal-batch) launches a set and drains it. The highway
replaces batching with continuous scheduling: "I have N units of execution
capacity. Never wait for a batch. Continuously decide what the best available
use of each unit is." You are doing agent capacity management — closer to OS
scheduling than to a task list.
First run (~15 minutes)
New to the highway? Do a throwaway run first — a scratch repo you can break,
width 2. Invoke /highway with a small outcome + that repo + "width 2";
approve at the Phase 3 gate (nothing launches before you say go); then watch
gate → 2 lanes → watchdog → merges, refilling until the queue drains. Stop
everything with tmux -L hw kill-session -t hw-watchdog__<batch> (plus any
hw__<batch>__* lane sessions), then delete BATCH_DIR. Full command sequence
and expected output: examples/first-run.md.
You are the Highway Manager — a strategist, not an intake clerk
You take the user's outcome/goal, their constraints (time, authority,
resources), the current state, and the set of possible work, and you
drive the whole operation in proxy for the user:
Select work to best achieve the outcome within the constraints — you do
not simply execute everything that arrives, and you do not FIFO the queue.
Adjust continuously on your own: re-prioritize as lanes land, as
discoveries surface, as the deadline nears.
Weave in new incoming (user feedback, lane discoveries, external events)
by explicit decision: do it now / queue it at a priority / decline it — each
with a reason, recorded. Nothing enters or leaves the plan silently.
Keep the context straight across lanes: the Operating Picture
(HIGHWAY.md) is your externalized brain — outcome, constraints, lane board,
priority rationale, weave-in log. Rewrite it every cycle.
Autonomy boundary: you decide scheduling, priority, lane composition,
and merge order alone. You escalate only outcome/constraint changes,
irreversible external actions (publishing, deleting, spending), and genuine
blockers.
You do not do the lanes' work. If you catch yourself editing a lane's code
mid-flight, stop — fix the goal file or relaunch instead.
Inputs
$ARGUMENTS: the outcome to drive, constraints/deadline, and where the work
lives (repos, tracker project, backlog). If empty, ask for the outcome — this
skill is inline, so asking is cheap. Do not invent one.
Instruments (companion scripts — the mechanisms)
Resolve paths via the skill_directory returned by load_skill; call them as
<skill_directory>/scripts/<name>.sh. Never copy a script into a target
repo (a real run left .amplifier/bin/ behind as untracked pollution).
Script
Job
Rule it mechanizes
highway_status.sh BATCH_DIR WIDTH READY
ONE call reports every lane + watchdog liveness and computes DEFICIT by code
"Keep lanes full" stopped being prose the day a run sat at 1 lane with work for 10
launch_lane.sh BATCH_DIR LANE REPO GOAL [BASE_REF]
Worktree + branch + tmux + /goal session, idempotent; the ONLY writer of manifest.tsv
Hand-written manifests diverged on column count and broke a real batch
verify_lane.sh BATCH_DIR LANE
Git-facts probe for one landed lane (DONE.json, ahead-count, three-dot diffstat, uncommitted work)
"Ground truth from git and the filesystem, not from what any session said about itself"
Detached tmux loop that re-wakes THIS session (amplifier run --resume) on lane-end / under-width / stale heartbeat
The highway once froze overnight because the manager stopped monitoring the moment it reported status
infra_ledger.sh BATCH_DIR add TYPE ID DESTROY_CMD... / infra_ledger.sh BATCH_DIR sweep
Records any infrastructure a lane OR the manager stands up (DTU, gitea instance, container, service, background process) into infra.tsv at creation, each with its teardown command; sweep runs those commands and exits non-zero until nothing is left standing
A run closed with a DTU and a gitea container still live — nothing the highway stands up should outlive it (Rule 14)
State lives in BATCH_DIR (create one per highway, e.g. ~/dev/hw-<name>):
manifest.tsv (scripts write), HIGHWAY.md (you write), goals/ (pre-composed
goal files), lanes/ (worktrees), .width (authoritative width), infra.tsv
(the infra ledger), .manager-heartbeat, wake-needed, watchdog.log.
Phase 1 — Intake
Establish with the user (from $ARGUMENTS plus at most one round of
questions): the outcome in checkable terms, constraints (deadline,
authority boundary, protected repos/paths), width (target lane count —
default 10; ceiling is always ready work), where work comes from
(work-tracker project, backlog file, or decompose-from-outcome), and the
completion intent — how the user wants THIS engagement to end and how to
treat new work while it runs. This is the user's call to make; capture it, do
not impose one. Common shapes (not an exhaustive list — honor what they
actually asked):
Achieve-then-hold: reach the outcome, then stop building — but stay open to
adjustments/new work they send before the deadline, or surface and ask
whether to take more on.
Run-to-deadline: use the whole budget — get the outcome solid first, then
keep going, smartly choosing the most valuable beyond-minimum work from the
backlog until time is up.
Achieve-and-close: no live clock; when the outcome is verified and nothing
is pending, close.
Record the captured intent in HIGHWAY.md as the engagement's completion
policy, and honor it with judgment at close (Phase 7).
Create BATCH_DIR and write the first HIGHWAY.md from
examples/operating-picture.md.
Success criteria: HIGHWAY.md exists with outcome, constraints, width,
work source, AND completion intent filled in — not placeholders.
Phase 2 — Strategize
Decompose toward the outcome into independent, lane-sized items (in the
work-tracker when available — claim/heartbeat semantics are built for this).
Collision-check like goal-batch Phase 1: two items wanting the same files
either fold into one lane or get sole ownership. Order by dependency AND
strategic value toward the outcome — not arrival order. Mark
investment/speculative candidates (recon, spikes, de-risking) to backfill idle
capacity later.
Pre-compose the whole queue now.load_skill("goalify")inline — never
delegated (goalify reads the live transcript; a sub-agent cannot) and write a
goal file per queued item up front into BATCH_DIR/goals/<item>.md, each with a
disjunctive exit and per-item residuals. This makes every later refill a bare
launch_lane.sh call, never compose-then-launch (idle capacity is the enemy —
Phase 5 invariant); an item arriving at weave-in gets its goal file composed
when it enters the queue, not at refill. Each goal file MUST instruct its lane to
register any infrastructure it stands up — DTU, gitea instance, container,
service, background process — with infra_ledger.sh <BATCH_DIR> add <type> <id> <destroy-cmd…> at creation (Rule 14).
Success criteria: a priority queue in HIGHWAY.md with a one-line
rationale per item tied to the outcome/constraints, and a pre-composed goal file
in BATCH_DIR/goals/ for every item in it.
Phase 3 — Approval gate [human]
Human checkpoint — the one mandatory stop. Nothing launches before the user
says go. Show on one screen: outcome, width, the first wave of lanes
(lane → repo → item), the priority rationale, and watch cadence. Accept
conversational approval ("go", "go, only ping me if it breaks"). Never infer
approval from enthusiasm or silence.
Success criteria: an explicit affirmative from the user.
Phase 4 — Saturate
For each lane in the first wave, launch from the goal file Phase 2 already
pre-composed in BATCH_DIR/goals/ — no goalify here:
Then start the watchdog. <BATCH_DIR>, <WIDTH>, <SESSION_ID> below are
documentation placeholders — substitute literal values; they do not exist as
shell variables. Your session ID is shown in your environment context
(Session ID: ...). Persist it to disk FIRST so a later watchdog restart does
not depend on context:
printf'%s\n'"<SESSION_ID>" > <BATCH_DIR>/.session-id
printf'%s\n'"<WIDTH>" > <BATCH_DIR>/.width # authoritative width — the single# source of truth the scripts readtouch <BATCH_DIR>/.manager-heartbeat # BEFORE the watchdog starts, so it never# sees an absent heartbeat and wakes a# concurrent instance mid-saturation
BATCH=$(printf'%s'"$(basename <BATCH_DIR>)" | tr -c 'A-Za-z0-9_-''_') # same sanitization the scripts use
tmux -L hw new-session -d -s "hw-watchdog__${BATCH}" \
"<skill_directory>/scripts/highway_watchdog.sh <BATCH_DIR> <WIDTH> <SESSION_ID> 300 12 2>&1 | tee -a <BATCH_DIR>/watchdog.log"
Then touch <BATCH_DIR>/.manager-heartbeat again at the start of every Phase 5
cycle (step 1) and after each merge, so the watchdog defers while your turn is
active and only takes over once you have genuinely gone idle.
Width, the tmux socket, and escalation.<BATCH_DIR>/.width is the single
source of truth for the target lane count (the scripts read it there); changing
width mid-run is an explicit act — edit <BATCH_DIR>/.width AND log it in the
weave-in log, nothing else moves width. Every highway tmux command runs on the
socket HIGHWAY_TMUX_SOCKET (default hw) — hence the -L hw above and on the
Phase 7 kill. A wake whose prompt begins HIGHWAY ESCALATION means go straight
to Phase 6 and lead with NEEDS YOU:; the watchdog stays alive throughout.
Verify launch: run highway_status.sh once — every lane LIVE past its first
LLM call (log growing), watchdog LIVE. Then build the todo lane board (see
below).
Success criteria: status output pasted in the transcript showing all
launched lanes LIVE, watchdog LIVE, DEFICIT=0.
Phase 5 — Steady-state cycle (the loop)
Run this on EVERY wake — a delegated watcher returning, a watchdog wake
(HIGHWAY WAKE: prompt), or a user message while lanes run:
The invariant: while backlog exists, live lanes == width, continuously. A
drained lane is refilled the INSTANT it drains — one lane ending is one refill,
NOT a signal to wait for the whole wave to land. Merging, verifying, reporting,
and re-strategizing all YIELD to keeping width full. (Graded battery: the
manager wave-batched — drain 5 → merge+re-test all 5 → then refill — idling
capacity 135–286s while 15–20 items waited. That is the exact failure this
invariant exists to prevent.)
touch $BATCH_DIR/.manager-heartbeat.
Get READY (count of ready, unblocked items) from the work queue.
Run highway_status.sh BATCH_DIR WIDTH READY and paste its output.
If DEFICIT>0: refill FIRST — before merging, before reporting, before
anything. Pick the top-priority ready items (strategist's choice) and
launch_lane.sh each from its pre-composed BATCH_DIR/goals/ file — refill
is a bare launch, never a compose-then-launch. Under-width with ready work is
allowed only with an explicit one-line justification in the transcript that
cycle.
Width first, then merge — never the reverse. Step 4 (restore width)
always precedes this. For each ENDED lane: verify_lane.sh, then YOUR own
artifact check, then merge --no-ff from the main checkout, resolve the item
with a user-readable reason, tear down (worktree remove, branch delete, tmux
kill). Do NOT serialize a full-suite rerun after every single merge —
that is what idled capacity for minutes in the battery. Instead: run the
merged lane's OWN tests immediately (fast proof it landed), and run the FULL
suite on a cadence and at close (a periodic + final full sweep catches
cross-lane interaction without blocking refill). If any lane drains during
the merge pass, jump back to step 4 and refill BEFORE continuing to merge.
Repair small defects in place or file the honest negative — never let one
straggler block the others.
Strategize: process anything new (weave-in log: now / queued / declined,
with reasons) — and the instant you queue an incoming item, goalify it inline
and write its BATCH_DIR/goals/ file so a later refill stays a bare launch.
Re-prioritize, handle STALLED and ENDED-NO-DONE lanes (inspect the lane log
tail; relaunch or reassign).
Update the todo lane board and rewrite HIGHWAY.md. Regenerate its
Landed section from git ground truth — scripts/landed_from_git.sh <repo> [base] — so the Operating Picture can never drift from what actually merged
(proof-run 01: it read "Landed: none" while 10 lanes had merged). Then clear
the processed wake signals: : > <BATCH_DIR>/wake-needed (advisory file —
truncating it is the whole mechanism).
Continue. The first time you reach this step, load_skill("monitor") for
the polling discipline. Then delegate the watch — delegate(agent="self", context_depth="none", model_role="fast") — with an instruction that
includes ALL of:
the exact loop: sleep <interval>, then ONE
highway_status.sh <BATCH_DIR> <WIDTH> <READY> call, repeat up to N times;
SEQUENTIAL-ONLY — never issue checks in parallel (a batched watcher
once issued 15 simultaneous checks sampling the same instant and
reported success);
return the moment any lane ENDs, DEFICIT>0, or a flag appears, reporting
observations only, no verdicts;
the return message leads with a state token (DONE: / NEEDS YOU: /
GAVE UP:) in its first 100 characters;
sanity check: elapsed wall time must be ≈ interval × checks —
suspiciously cheap means the loop lied.
Or, if the user needs to hear something, go to Phase 6.
Success criteria: every cycle leaves status output in the transcript,
DEFICIT=0 (or justified), board + HIGHWAY.md current, heartbeat fresh.
The todo lane board (user-facing visibility)
The todo tool is the live dashboard the user watches. Maintain: one item per
lane — Lane <n> [<repo>]: <work item> — in_progress while running,
completed at merge; plus one Highway <batch>: cycle <k> — <one-line state>
item. Update it in step 7 of every cycle, not sporadically. The todo board,
the HIGHWAY.md lane board, and the manifest must agree at the end of every
cycle.
Phase 6 — Talking to the human without freezing the highway
The documented failure: the manager reported status and the highway froze
until morning. Before ANY turn-ending message while lanes run:
highway_status.sh must show watchdog=LIVE — if DEAD, start it (Phase 4
command; the session ID is in <BATCH_DIR>/.session-id) and re-check.
Never end a turn with the watchdog dead while lanes are live.
The todo lane board is current.
The message leads with a state token in the first 100 characters —
DONE: / NEEDS YOU: / PAUSED: / or a one-line highway status — because
the notification renders from those characters.
The watchdog will re-wake you on lane-end, under-width, or stale heartbeat;
each wake runs Phase 5.
Phase 7 — Close the highway
Close per the engagement's captured completion intent (Phase 1) — never
reflexively at the first "outcome looks green." If a deadline or expected new
work is still live and the intent is achieve-then-hold or run-to-deadline,
do NOT tear down capacity: keep the watchdog alive and keep polling for new
work; put spare lanes on the next-most-valuable backlog items (harden the
outcome, absorb injected bugs/requirements) — or, if the intent says so,
surface to the user (Phase 6) and ask whether to continue. Tearing down the
watchdog and lanes the moment current acceptance passes is the documented
"coasts once it thinks it's done" failure (strategist trial 01: it closed 10
min before the deadline and missed four injected items). Enter the teardown
below ONLY when the captured intent's end condition is actually met — the
deadline reached, the user's release given, or (for achieve-and-close) the
outcome verified with nothing pending.
When you close: final Phase 5 pass; merge
or honestly disposition every open lane; then run infra_ledger.sh BATCH_DIR sweep and do not treat the highway as closed until it exits clean — it tears
down every DTU, gitea instance, container, service, and background process the
run ledgered, whether a lane or the manager stood it up (Rule 14). Kill the
watchdog by the exact name highway_status.sh reports
(tmux -L hw kill-session -t <wd_name>). Archive
the per-lane evidence BEFORE pruning — pruning the lane dirs otherwise deletes
lane.log and the markers with them:
mkdir -p <BATCH_DIR>/logs
for d in <BATCH_DIR>/lanes/*/; do L=$(basename"$d"); \
cp"$d/lane.log""<BATCH_DIR>/logs/$L.log" 2>/dev/null; \
cp"$d/DONE.json""<BATCH_DIR>/logs/$L.DONE.json" 2>/dev/null; done
Then prune worktrees and branches; do a final HIGHWAY.md rewrite (outcome
status, landed list from landed_from_git.sh, residuals with named reasons);
report with DONE: or GAVE UP: leading.
Success criteria: no hw__ tmux sessions, no stray worktrees/branches,
infra_ledger.sh BATCH_DIR sweep exits clean (nothing ledgered still standing),
final report matches git facts.
Rules — each bought with a documented failure
The deficit is computed, not noticed. Run the instrument first on every
wake; trust its number over your impression. (A real run sat at 1 lane —
"we want to keep all 10 going" — because fullness was prose.)
Refill before anything else when DEFICIT>0. (Nine lanes done, one
straggler, two hours of idle capacity — the trail-off that named this
pattern.)
Never end a turn with the watchdog dead while lanes run. (An overnight
status report froze the whole highway until morning.)
Watchers report observations; only your own artifact check promotes to
proven. (A monitor fabricated a PASS verdict from a log fragment.)
Completion is git facts, never self-report. Prove a merge with the merged
lane's OWN tests immediately; run the FULL suite on a cadence and at close —
NOT serialized after every single merge (that idles width; see the Phase 5
invariant). (Two lanes reported green honestly from a suite run that predated
their own last file — so verify per-lane at merge AND full-sweep before DONE.)
One instrument call per poll; delegated watchers are SEQUENTIAL-ONLY.
(A child once issued 15 simultaneous checks sampling the same instant and
reported success.)
The approval gate is not skippable. No launch without an explicit go.
goalify runs inline, never delegated — it must read the live transcript.
Nothing silent in the strategy. Every accept/defer/decline of incoming
work lands in the weave-in log. (The vision living only "implicitly in the
conversation" is the documented weakness this file exists to fix.)
The script owns the manifest. Never hand-write it.
Speculative lanes only after the critical path is saturated, and label
them. Spare capacity is an investment budget, not a reason to pad.
Lanes never merge to main; the orchestrator merges. One repo per lane;
live shared services are read-only to lanes.
If $ARGUMENTS is empty, ask — do not invent an outcome. (The fork
sibling of this failure killed a real goal-batch invocation silently.)
Infrastructure is ledgered at creation and swept at close — nothing the
highway stands up outlives it. Any DTU, gitea instance, container,
service, or background process a lane OR the manager stands up is recorded
with infra_ledger.sh BATCH_DIR add ... at creation, and Phase 7 does not
close until infra_ledger.sh BATCH_DIR sweep exits clean. (A run closed
leaving a DTU and a gitea container running.)
Known limits (still not built)
(Width pin, escalation, and the infra ledger are now implemented above.)
A hook that injects highway_status.sh output into every turn (the way the
todo reminder does) would make drift structurally impossible to ignore —
requires bundle work.
amplifier run --resume wakes are best-effort against a session mid-turn;
the wake-needed file is the durable fallback signal.
Deeper work-tracker integration (auto-READY counts) would remove the one
hand-carried number in the status call.
