pickup-task

Optional input: which task or plan to pick up (a task ID, a plan name, or a description).

This skill executes work that's already been planned. Use scripts/tome.py (tome help) to manage status changes — don't hand-execute git or status moves. tome is on PATH in Bash; if not found, fall back to python "$TOME_PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts/tome.py" <cmd>. It resolves which vault via --vault / walking up from cwd / VAULT_ROOT; bare paths like wiki/SCHEMA.md are relative to the vault root, not the plugin root. Run tome from wherever you already are — it finds the vault itself. Don't cd into the vault or find your way to task/plan files; let the tome commands surface them.

The user is always happy to answer questions. If intent or scope is unclear — which task, how far to take it, an ambiguity in the plan — ask.

1. Prime yourself on the vault. Run tome sync to pull, then tome prime --full (skip if already primed this session) — prints SCHEMA.md and the index in one shot.

2. Locate the task and its plan. If the user named a task or plan, find it. If they named a milestone instead (an id like m-0 or its title — the epic layer, see wiki/SCHEMA.md), resume it rather than picking one task in isolation: run tome task task list --milestone <name> --plain to list its open children (backlog.md already orders each status group by ordinal), then pick the next one — an In Progress child first (someone left it mid-flight), else the highest-priority To Do child, ties broken by list order. Confirm the pick with the user if it's not clear-cut. Selection data comes entirely from that list output; there's no separate tome command for this. With no name given at all, check the board (tome task task list --plain) and the project's live plans (plans/, not plans/archive/) and confirm which one they mean.

3. Mark the work started. tome start <task-id-or-slug> — accepts either, resolving the other half if linked (a plan without a task, or a task without a plan, is normal). Sets the plan active, moves the task to In Progress (-a @me), logs work-started, syncs, then prints the task text (labels included) and the full plan body as your working context. Run it directly — it's pure bookkeeping that dumps everything the next steps need, so there's no separate task-lookup step. Read the plan in full and follow its [[wikilinks]]; if you have concerns, stop and discuss with the user before going further.

4. Check the agent-tier label (gate). The task text tome start just printed carries an agent:<tier> label (tier: haiku < sonnet < opus < fable — the suggested executor for the work). Compare it against the model you are running as. If the tier differs in either direction, or there's a label and you can't tell, stop before doing the work: tell the user the suggested tier and your own, and wait. Running below the tier risks the work's quality; running above it wastes capability and money — both are the user's call, they'll switch the model or tell you to continue. No label, or an exact match: proceed. (The task is already started; switching model now only changes who does the work — the started state stays accurate.)

5. Do the task work. Execute the plan in the relevant code repo (not the vault), following that repo's CLAUDE.md. Stick to the plan's scope; if you hit a fork it doesn't resolve, ask rather than guess. Verify per the plan's verification section and report results honestly.

6. Commit. Present. No push. Commit the work. Check repo CLAUDE.md for commit rules first. Show user the diff and verify results. Do not push. Wait for user OK. Push only after OK.

7. Close out the tracking. Once the work has landed: tome done <slug> --summary "..." citing the shipping commit (--as superseded/--as abandoned instead of the default done, if that's how it landed). This archives the plan (moves it to plans/archive/, regenerates its project hub and the index), checks the task's acceptance criteria, closes and completes it with the summary, re-points its --ref at the archived path, logs done, and syncs — one command, no deferred sweep. Umbrella plans: if the task is one phase of a milestone plan shared by sibling phase tasks, tome done <task-id> closes only that task and leaves the plan active (it prints how many open siblings kept it alive); the plan archives automatically when the last sibling closes. Don't try to close the shared plan slug while phases remain open — it's refused unless --force.