Crank Skill

Quick Ref: Autonomous epic execution. /swarm for each wave with runtime-native spawning. Output: closed issues + phase-2 handoff for /validation.

YOU MUST EXECUTE THIS WORKFLOW. Do not just describe it.

Loop position

Move 5 (wave execution) of the operating loop. Consumes the slice validation plan; produces wave-by-wave slice completion via /swarm + /implement. Hard gate at wave start: every row of the wave-validity check must pass (distinct write scopes, no shared migration/contract/CLI surface, declared integration order, owner per slice, discard path per slice). Any failed row → run those slices sequential, not parallel. Parallelism is explicit ownership, not swarm chaos.

Autonomous execution: implement all issues until the epic is DONE.

CLI dependencies: bd (issue tracking), ao (knowledge flywheel). Both optional — see skills/shared/SKILL.md for fallback table. If bd is unavailable, use TaskList for issue tracking and skip beads sync. If ao is unavailable, skip knowledge injection/extraction.

For Claude runtime feature coverage (agents/hooks/worktree/settings), the shared source of truth is skills/shared/references/claude-code-latest-features.md, mirrored locally at references/claude-code-latest-features.md.

Architecture: Crank + Swarm

Crank owns orchestration, epic/task lifecycle, and knowledge-flywheel steps. Swarm owns runtime-native worker spawning, fresh-context isolation, per-wave execution, and cleanup. In beads mode Crank gets each wave from bd ready, bridges issues into worker tasks, verifies results, and syncs status back to beads. In TaskList mode the same loop runs over pending unblocked tasks instead of beads issues.

Read references/team-coordination.md for the full per-wave execution model, references/ralph-loop-contract.md for the fresh-context worker contract, and references/worker-specs.md for per-worker model/tool/prompt specs.

Flags

Global Limits

MAX_EPIC_WAVES = 50 (hard limit across entire epic)

This prevents infinite loops on circular dependencies or cascading failures. Typical epics use 5–10 waves max.

Completion Enforcement (The Sisyphus Rule)

Not done until you emit an explicit completion marker after each wave:

• <promise>DONE</promise> when the epic is truly complete
• <promise>BLOCKED</promise> when progress cannot continue
• <promise>PARTIAL</promise> when work remains

Never claim completion without one of these markers.

Node Repair Operator

When a task fails during wave execution, classify as RETRY (transient — re-add with adjustment, max 2), DECOMPOSE (too complex — split into sub-issues, terminal), or PRUNE (blocked — escalate immediately). Budget: 2 per task. Read references/failure-recovery.md for classification signals and recovery commands.

Mutation logging on failure classification:

• DECOMPOSE: Log task_removed for the original task, then task_added for each new sub-task.
• PRUNE: Log task_removed with the block reason.
• RETRY: No mutation (task identity unchanged).

Execution Steps

Given /crank [epic-id | .agents/rpi/execution-packet.json | plan-file.md | "description"]:

Preflight (Recovery hooks → Step 3a.3)

Read references/execution-preflight.md when you need recovery-hook setup, effort/tier mapping, knowledge-context loading (Step 0), tracking-mode detection (0.5), gc-pool detection (0.6), epic identification (Step 1), branch isolation (1.5), wave-counter / mutation-trail / shared-task-notes initialization (1a–1a.2), test-first classification (1b), epic details (Step 2), ready-issue listing (Step 3), and the four pre-flight checks (3a, 3a.1 pre-mortem, 3a.2 bd-audit, 3a.3 changed-string grep).

The Branch Isolation Gate (Step 1.5) has its own dedicated contract — see references/branch-isolation.md for when crank must create or refuse an isolation branch.

Wave dispatch (Step 3b → Step 4)

Read references/wave-dispatch.md when you need SPEC WAVE / TEST WAVE / RED Gate flow (Steps 3b–3c), context-briefing assembly (3b.1), shared-notes injection (3b.2), parallel-wave isolation (3b.3), or Step 4 wave execution detail — GREEN mode, issue-typing + file manifests, grep-for-existing-functions, validation metadata policy, acceptance-criteria injection, language-standards injection, file-ownership table, wave-counter / 50-cap gate, spec-consistency gate, cross-cutting constraint injection, gc-pool dispatch, and cross-cutting validation.

Wave completion (Step 5 → Step 8.7)

Read references/wave-completion.md when you need verify-and-sync (Step 5, external-gate protocol), wave acceptance check + CI-policy parity gate (5.5), wave checkpoint + per-criterion verdicts + back-compat fallback (5.7), vibe-context checkpoint (5.7b), shared-task-notes harvest (5.7c), plan-mutation logging (5.7d), wave status report (5.8), worktree base-SHA refresh (5.9), check-for-more-work loop (Step 6), de-sloppify pass (6.5), pre-vibe lifecycle checks (6.9), final batched validation (Step 7), phase-2 summary (Step 8), learnings extraction (8.5), shared-notes archive (8.6), and the scope-completion pre-close gate (8.7).

Step 5.5 includes the CI-Policy Parity Gate: if a wave diff touches .github/workflows/*.yml, run bash scripts/validate-ci-policy-parity.sh; any non-zero exit fails wave acceptance and surfaces the generated drift report. See references/wave-patterns.md "CI-Policy Parity Gate" for the worked example and trigger pattern.

Step 9: Report Completion

Tell the user:

1. Epic ID and title
2. Number of issues completed
3. Total iterations used (of 50 max)
4. Final vibe results
5. Flywheel status (if ao available)
6. Suggest running /validation to complete closeout and promote learnings

Output completion marker:

<promise>DONE</promise>
Epic: <epic-id>
Issues completed: N
Iterations: M/50
Flywheel: <status from ao metrics flywheel status>

If stopped early:

<promise>BLOCKED</promise>
Reason: <global limit reached | unresolvable blockers>
Issues remaining: N
Iterations: M/50

The FIRE Loop

Crank repeats FIRE (Find → Ignite → Reap → Vibe → Escalate) for each wave until all issues are CLOSED (beads) or all tasks are completed (TaskList). Read references/wave-patterns.md for the loop model, parallel wave rules, and acceptance check details.

Key Rules

• Auto-detect tracking (bd first, TaskList fallback) and use the provided epic or plan input directly.
• Use /swarm for every wave, preserve fresh per-issue context, and refuse to continue past unresolved conflicts or the 50-wave cap.
• Validate once per wave, fix CRITICAL findings before completion, and keep looping until every issue/task is done.
• Load learnings at the start, extract learnings at th