Imported from watzon/shamu (AGENTS.md). Install upstream with npx skills add watzon/shamu. Copyright stays with the author.

Shamu — Project Pipeline

This repo is a multi-agent coding orchestrator being built by a swarm of coding agents. If you're starting a session on this project:

1. Load the shamu-dev skill first (.claude/skills/shamu-dev/SKILL.md) — it's the contract for how we work across sessions.
2. Read HANDOFF.md at the repo root — current state, what's next, what's in flight, user-owed answers.
3. Read PLAN.md §§ "Core architecture" + "Phased delivery → Phase N" (where N is the current phase from HANDOFF).
4. Check docs/phase-0/*.md for spike findings that informed later phases.

The shamu-dev skill covers the full pipeline (phase intake → swarm spawn → review → commit → close), sub-agent prompt template, verification gates, commit discipline, recurring constraints, and session-continuity rules. Loading it replaces manually re-reading PLAN.md end-to-end.

Do not rely on TaskCreate/TaskList for anything that must survive session boundaries — those are session-scoped. HANDOFF.md is the source of truth for "what's next."

GitNexus — Code Intelligence

This project is indexed by GitNexus as shamu (5262 symbols, 14573 relationships, 300 execution flows). Use the GitNexus MCP tools to understand code, assess impact, and navigate safely.

If any GitNexus tool warns the index is stale, run npx gitnexus analyze in terminal first.

Always Do

• MUST run impact analysis before editing any symbol. Before modifying a function, class, or method, run gitnexus_impact({target: "symbolName", direction: "upstream"}) and report the blast radius (direct callers, affected processes, risk level) to the user.
• MUST run gitnexus_detect_changes() before committing to verify your changes only affect expected symbols and execution flows.
• MUST warn the user if impact analysis returns HIGH or CRITICAL risk before proceeding with edits.
• When exploring unfamiliar code, use gitnexus_query({query: "concept"}) to find execution flows instead of grepping. It returns process-grouped results ranked by relevance.
• When you need full context on a specific symbol — callers, callees, which execution flows it participates in — use gitnexus_context({name: "symbolName"}).

When Debugging

1. gitnexus_query({query: "<error or symptom>"}) — find execution flows related to the issue
2. gitnexus_context({name: "<suspect function>"}) — see all callers, callees, and process participation
3. READ gitnexus://repo/shamu/process/{processName} — trace the full execution flow step by step
4. For regressions: gitnexus_detect_changes({scope: "compare", base_ref: "main"}) — see what your branch changed

When Refactoring

• Renaming: MUST use gitnexus_rename({symbol_name: "old", new_name: "new", dry_run: true}) first. Review the preview — graph edits are safe, text_search edits need manual review. Then run with dry_run: false.
• Extracting/Splitting: MUST run gitnexus_context({name: "target"}) to see all incoming/outgoing refs, then gitnexus_impact({target: "target", direction: "upstream"}) to find all external callers before moving code.
• After any refactor: run gitnexus_detect_changes({scope: "all"}) to verify only expected files changed.

Never Do

• NEVER edit a function, class, or method without first running gitnexus_impact on it.
• NEVER ignore HIGH or CRITICAL risk warnings from impact analysis.
• NEVER rename symbols with find-and-replace — use gitnexus_rename which understands the call graph.
• NEVER commit changes without running gitnexus_detect_changes() to check affected scope.

Tools Quick Reference

Impact Risk Levels

Resources

Self-Check Before Finishing

Before completing any code modification task, verify:

1. gitnexus_impact was run for all modified symbols
2. No HIGH/CRITICAL risk warnings were ignored
3. gitnexus_detect_changes() confirms changes match expected scope
4. All d=1 (WILL BREAK) dependents were updated

Keeping the Index Fresh

After committing code changes, the GitNexus index becomes stale. Re-run analyze to update it:

npx gitnexus analyze

If the index previously included embeddings, preserve them by adding --embeddings:

npx gitnexus analyze --embeddings

To check whether embeddings exist, inspect .gitnexus/meta.json — the stats.embeddings field shows the count (0 means no embeddings). Running analyze without --embeddings will delete any previously generated embeddings.

Claude Code users: A PostToolUse hook handles this automatically after git commit and git merge.

CLI

Shamu — Project Pipeline

This repo is a multi-agent coding orchestrator being built by a swarm of coding agents. If you're starting a session on this project:

1. Load the shamu-dev skill first (.claude/skills/shamu-dev/SKILL.md) — it's the contract for how we work across sessions.
2. Read HANDOFF.md at the repo root — current state, what's next, what's in flight, user-owed answers.
3. Read PLAN.md §§ "Core architecture" + "Phased delivery → Phase N" (where N is the current phase from HANDOFF).
4. Check docs/phase-0/*.md for spike findings that informed later phases.

The shamu-dev skill covers the full pipeline (phase intake → swarm spawn → review → commit → close), sub-agent prompt template, verification gates, commit discipline, recurring constraints, and session-continuity rules. Loading it replaces manually re-reading PLAN.md end-to-end.

Do not rely on session-scoped task trackers for anything that must survive session boundaries. HANDOFF.md is the source of truth for "what's next."