wave

Wave (bootstrap)

The /wave command turns the illo-sidebar repo into a self-managing, label-driven, single-worker orchestration loop on top of GitHub Issues + PRs.

You — the assistant running this skill — are the orchestrator. You stay on Opus 4.7. Every actual code change is dispatched to a Sonnet (or Opus 4.6 for complexity:high) sub-agent by /wave-tick.

What this skill does

1. Bootstrap labels. Run bin/wave-init-labels.sh. Idempotent — already existing labels get colour/description refreshed via --force. Required labels are listed in docs/wave.md.

2. Survey the queue. Run bin/wave-survey.sh. Get a single-line summary of issue counts by status/priority and PR count by review state.

3. Idempotency check. If a CronCreate for /wave-tick already exists (search by job name wave-tick), DO NOT schedule a second one. Print wave: already engaged and exit.

4. Schedule the tick. Use the CronCreate tool (or loop skill, fallback) to schedule /wave-tick every 5 minutes:

   CronCreate(
     name: "wave-tick",
     schedule: "*/5 * * * *",
     command: "/wave-tick",
     description: "illo-sidebar wave orchestration tick"
   )
   

   If CronCreate is unavailable in this harness, fall back to: Skill(skill="loop", args="5m /wave-tick").

5. Surface a TUI notification. POST to the daemon so the user sees the wave engaged in their sidebar:

   PORT=$(cat ~/.claude/illo-sidebar/daemon.port)
   curl -sS -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d "{\"kind\":\"notification\",\"agent_kind\":\"wave\",\"title\":\"wave engaged\",\"message\":\"$(bin/wave-survey.sh)\",\"urgency\":\"low\"}" \
     http://127.0.0.1:$PORT/event || true
   

   Errors are swallowed — daemon may not be running.

6. Print confirmation. One line back to the user:

   wave engaged: <survey-output>; tick every 5m. Use /wave-stop to halt, /wave-focus <#> to pin.
   

Hard constraints

• DO NOT push code, create PRs, or open issues from this skill. Bootstrapping the loop is metadata only.
• DO NOT bypass bin/wave-init-labels.sh — every state transition assumes the labels exist.
• DO NOT schedule a second tick if one is already running. Re-running /wave while engaged is a no-op.
• DO NOT touch branch protection. The user (or a separate orchestrator turn) configures that out-of-band.

Failure modes

• gh auth status shows the wrong user → abort with wave: ABORT — gh auth not laiadlotape; run gh auth login first.
• gh missing → abort with wave: ABORT — gh CLI not installed.
• bin/wave-init-labels.sh fails → print its stderr and exit non-zero.
• CronCreate unavailable AND loop skill unavailable → print wave: ABORT — no scheduling primitive; install the loop skill or use a harness with CronCreate.

Related

• /wave-tick — fires every 5 minutes, dispatches at most one worker.
• /wave-stop — cancels the CronCreate.
• /wave-focus <#> — pin one issue/PR to the front of the queue.
• /wave-status — quick at-a-glance state.
• docs/wave.md — full operational guide.