vc-autopilot

Contract skill that owns the provisional goal block artifact for Autopilot Mode sessions. This skill is invoked by the orchestrator to emit, validate, and resume from the goal block. The canonical protocol lives in process/development-protocols/autopilot.md.

When To Invoke

Invoke this skill when:

• The orchestrator has just received an autopilot trigger phrase and needs to emit the provisional goal block after the consolidated clarification round.
• The orchestrator detects a pasted goal block at session start and needs to determine whether it is a resume scenario (goal block already present → no new clarification round).
• The validate-autopilot-goal-block.mjs D1 validator needs to be run against an artifact.

Skill Artifact

The provisional goal block — a structured text block of ≤ 4000 characters with exactly 9 named fields. The canonical field spec lives in process/development-protocols/autopilot.md §Provisional Goal Block Format. This skill does not redefine the spec — it references it.

Required fields (exact string anchors — do not rename or abbreviate):

1. SESSION GOAL:
2. ENTRY PHASE:
3. REMAINING PHASES:
4. CLARIFICATIONS LOCKED:
5. EXECUTE CONSENT: — must contain the literal text standing-granted
6. DECISION POLICY:
7. HARD STOPS:
8. TEST GATES:
9. START:

Emission Procedure

Step-by-step for the orchestrator:

1. Complete the consolidated clarification round (process/development-protocols/autopilot.md §Consolidated Clarification Round).
2. Determine ENTRY PHASE from on-disk artifact detection (autopilot.md §Trigger-Anywhere Detection Flow).
3. Build the REMAINING PHASES checklist: for each phase not yet complete in canonical RIPER-5 order, add a [ ] checkbox line with the phase name and planned execution strategy.
4. Fill in all 9 fields using the locked clarification answers.
5. Count total characters. If > 4000: compress DECISION POLICY and CLARIFICATIONS LOCKED to summaries and reference autopilot.md for full detail.
6. Print the block to chat as a fenced code block.
7. Write the block to disk: {task-folder}/{slug}_AUTOPILOT_GOAL_{dd-mm-yy}.md (header: "Emitted: datetime]. Provisional block. V7 will emit (UPDATE) variant.").
8. Emit AUTOPILOT_ACTIVATED: [task] — entry phase: [phase] — goal block emitted.

Resume Detection

How the orchestrator recognizes a pasted goal block at session start:

• If the user message contains all 9 field names as headings/labels, treat it as an autopilot resume.
• On resume: skip the consolidated clarification round entirely. Read ENTRY PHASE and REMAINING PHASES from the pasted block. Read CLARIFICATIONS LOCKED as the already-locked decisions. Read DECISION POLICY and HARD STOPS as the standing policy.
• Emit [MODE: AUTOPILOT | <ENTRY PHASE>] and begin the run from START:.
• Do NOT issue a new clarification round (SPEC AC-14).

V7 UPDATE Variant

When VALIDATE V7 completes during an autopilot run, the orchestrator:

1. Reads the real gate commands from the new validate-contract.
2. Copies the provisional block.
3. Prefixes SESSION GOAL: with (UPDATE) .
4. Replaces TEST GATES: TBD — populated after VALIDATE with the actual gate commands.
5. Updates START: to reflect post-VALIDATE state.
6. Prints the updated block to chat.
7. Appends an ## (UPDATE) [YYYY-MM-DD] section to the disk file (never overwrites the original).

Validator

Run after writing any goal block artifact to confirm it passes D1 checks:

bash
node .claude/skills/vc-autopilot/scripts/validate-autopilot-goal-block.mjs <artifact-path>

Exit 0 = PASS (all 9 required fields present, EXECUTE CONSENT contains standing-granted, total ≤ 4000 chars). Exit 1 = FAIL (one or more checks failed — error printed to stdout). WARN printed (exit 0) when TEST GATES: contains TBD (reminder that V7 UPDATE is pending).

See scripts/validate-autopilot-goal-block.mjs and fixtures/ for the D1 validator and pass/fail fixture pair.