/agent-native — Make Out-of-Session Agents AgentOps-Native (Hookless)

Run a Claude loop outside an interactive Claude Code / Codex session — an Anthropic Managed Agent, an Agent SDK loop, or a self-hosted sandbox job — and keep it under the same AgentOps guardrails. The old reflex ("port the ~50 marketplace hooks into the new runtime") is wrong for AgentOps 3.0. This skill is the hookless reframe.

Overview

AgentOps 3.0 is hookless. Guardrails come from three things, never hooks:

1. Skills — skills/<name>/SKILL.md progressive-disclosure contracts (standards, behavioral-discipline, council, validation, trace, provenance).
2. The ao CLI — the deterministic tool surface (ao session bootstrap, ao inject, ao corpus inject --query, ao validate, ao goals measure) plus the standards skill loaded into the agent's instructions.
3. CI as the authoritative gate — .github/workflows/validate.yml runs the standards/scenario checks as CI jobs, NOT as a PreToolUse hook.

So an out-of-session agent becomes AgentOps-native by: (a) loading AgentOps skills into the Agent definition, (b) exposing the ao CLI as a callable tool (MCP or shell-tool) so the agent can ao session bootstrap / ao inject / ao validate itself, and (c) running the same CI-style validation gate on its outputs before the work is accepted. The Agent SDK's own hooks become an optional thin adapter for teams wanting in-loop interception — never the primary mechanism.

Mechanism status (planned, not yet shipped). This skill is the doctrine layer and lands first; the two concrete commands it names — ao agent bundle (ag-jspr) and ao mcp serve (ag-higd) — are open, ready beads under epic ag-7s9fo, not yet in the live CLI. The ao session bootstrap / ao inject / ao corpus inject / ao validate / ao goals measure commands the bundled agent calls are real today. When ag-jspr and ag-higd land, remove this skill's entry from scripts/skill-body-refs-allowlist.txt.

This is an extension of two existing skills, not a rewrite:

• standards — gains an Agent-runtime profile: how the standards/behavioral-discipline checklists get loaded by a non-interactive Claude and enforced via CI rather than /vibe.
• converter + the skills/ ↔ skills-codex/ parity machinery — reused as-is to keep the bundle dual-runtime.

⚠️ Critical Constraints

• This is a reframe of the retired "port hooks" idea, NOT a hook revival. Why: hooks are runtime-coupled and fork the guardrail surface; skills + ao + CI are the portable 3.0 waist that works in any runtime.
• Single source of truth — no skill fork. The cloud/SDK agent loads the same skills/ files an interactive session uses. Why: a forked guardrail set drifts and defeats the corpus moat.
• Managed Agents are NOT ZDR. Never bundle holdout target/ground_truth/PII into an Agent definition or its MCP tool responses. Why: anything sent to the cloud agent leaves the boundary permanently. For holdout-touching work see eval-outcomes.
• CI is the gate, not the adapter. The optional SDK hook adapter is convenience, never the enforcement boundary. Why: a bypassed in-loop hook must not mean unvalidated work merges; CI is unconditional.

Workflow

Phase 1: Bundle skills into an Agent definition

ao agent bundle --runtime managed > agent-def.json

Stitches the selected AgentOps skills (default: session-bootstrap, standards, behavioral-discipline, validation, provenance) into a Managed Agents API payload — model + instructions + skills array + an MCP descriptor for the ao tool surface. POST-able with the managed-agents-2026-04-01 beta header.

Checkpoint: the payload carries the skills + the ao MCP descriptor, and contains no holdout values.

Phase 2: Expose ao as a tool

Run a thin MCP server (ao mcp serve) — or a documented shell-tool spec — exposing session_bootstrap, inject, corpus_inject, validate, goals_measure so the hosted loop can orient and self-check. For self-hosted sandboxes (bushido), the MCP server runs inside the sandbox boundary with tailnet access to Dolt.

Checkpoint: the agent can call ao session bootstrap + ao inject itself before doing work.

Phase 3: Gate the output via CI

A reusable workflow (agent-output-validate.yml) runs ao validate + the standards/scenario gates against whatever the agent produced (PR branch or artifact bundle) — the same authoritative gate as interactive work. Green CI is the merge gate.

Checkpoint: the agent's output passed the identical CI gate; nothing merges red.

Optional: SDK hook adapter

For Agent SDK users who want in-loop interception, a documented PreToolUse/Stop adapter shells out to ao validate (with the standards checklist loaded). Clearly optional — the default path is CI, never hooks. Reference samples (TypeScript + Python, wired into no runtime by default): references/sdk-hook-adapter.md.

Output Specification

Format: a JSON Agent definition plus a validated PR/artifact. Path: the Agent definition is written to agent-def.json at the repo root; the runtime profile is written to docs/contracts/agent-runtime-profile.md (the frontmatter produces path). Structure: model, instructions (stitched skills), skills array, ao MCP descriptor; the output is accepted only on a green CI run.

Quality Rubric

• Agent definition loads the same skills/ files as interactive sessions (no fork).
• ao is callable by the agent (MCP/shell-tool); it can self-bootstrap + self-validate.
• Outputs pass the same CI gate as interactive work (CI is the boundary, not a hook).
• No holdout target/ground_truth/PII in the Agent definition or tool responses.

Examples

# Bundle, serve the ao tool surface, and let CI gate the output
ao agent bundle --runtime managed > agent-def.json
ao mcp serve &   # exposes session_bootstrap/inject/validate/goals_measure as MCP tools
# (submit agent-def.json to the Managed Agents API; its PR is gated by agent-output-validate.yml)

Troubleshooting

See Also

• standards — the checklists the agent loads + CI enforces
• converter — keeps the bundle dual-runtime (skills ↔ skills-codex)
• eval-outcomes — holdout-safe grading for cloud/out-of-session agents
• using-gc — running a whole out-of-session loop (gc owns orchestration; ao agent bundle produces the definition)
• skill-auditor — audit this skill before declaring stable