Imported from doctor-ew/nightshift-community (AGENTS.md). Install upstream with npx skills add doctor-ew/nightshift-community. Copyright stays with the author.

nightshift instructions for coding agents

nightshift is a source-agnostic engineering workflow. Its canonical stage instructions live in commands/nightshift-*.md; reusable role instructions are in agents/; supporting scripts are in scripts/. These are the runtime-neutral core. Codex skills and Claude commands are adapters, not the product itself.

Using the pipeline

• Start a factory run with nightshift <ticket-ref>. Runtime adapters may also expose the same core command as $nightshift <ticket-ref> or /nightshift-eng <ref>.
• nightshift batch <tickets-or-query> runs independent tickets autonomously. Use --branch auto --push to commit and push each verified ticket branch, and add --pr only when a pull request should be opened. These flags never merge or deploy production.
• Codex, Claude Code, and local-model runners must use the same artifacts, provider routing, and policy. No runtime is the canonical implementation.
• Keep nightshift checked out: a symlink install deliberately uses this checkout as the source of truth for upgrades.

Autonomy and confirmation policy

Proceed without asking for confirmation for read-only work, searching, edits, creating files, tests, commits, branches, worktrees, and other reversible workspace changes that the user requested or that are a normal part of a requested nightshift stage. Do not introduce approval stops for hypothetical risk.

Ask for explicit confirmation only immediately before permanently deleting or removing data/files/branches (including a history rewrite that removes remote history) or before a production deployment. Do not add a confirmation gate just because an operation edits, commits, pushes, opens or merges a pull request, or deploys to development/staging. A request to run /nightshift-deploy does not itself authorize its production deploy; prepare and validate everything else first, then present the exact production command and target for confirmation.

Unattended runtime modes may remove CLI permission prompts. That makes the policy gateway planned in docs/DARK-FACTORY-EPIC.md essential: prompt text alone is not a security boundary.

Factory mode

When NIGHTSHIFT_FACTORY_MODE=true, a failed test, review, drift, QA, or CI gate is not a reason to wait for an operator. Make the smallest in-scope repair and retry that gate, recording each attempt. Limit automatic repair to three attempts per gate. On exhaustion, leave a concrete failure receipt and stop only that ticket; a batch continues with its other tickets.

Project conventions

• Everything installed by nightshift must keep the nightshift- prefix.
• Beads is a local ledger, never the upstream ticket source of truth.
• Do not invoke gstack commands or agents from a nightshift workflow.
• Role prompts are runtime-neutral. Do not add provider-specific tools or a static model: key to agents/nightshift-*.md; routing belongs in routing.json.
• Prefer scripts/nightshift-capability.sh --has <tool> over ad-hoc capability checks.