firstmate: Skill for Claude Code

afk

Away mode is a POSTURE of the one supervision session, not a second architecture. Being away changes exactly two things: how the captain is informed, and what happens at a captain-owned decision point (hold for return, or the answer the captain's away words already gave). It never changes the authority set. The posture is a file, state/.afk-contract, written only by bin/fm-afk-contract.sh in the same turn as /afk; nothing infers the posture from chat. A record carrying quiet mode (bin/fm-afk-contract.sh mode) is not this posture: the captain is present, so none of this skill's holds for a return apply to it (the quiet skill owns it). Typing /afk is itself the go: the captain may not look at the screen again, so entry never waits for a further human response, and no read-back gates it or asks for a go. Hold-for-return is the default and the only reach profile this release records: there is no phone channel, and the entry announcement says so aloud every time.

Entering: /afk [words]

1. Write the record first, in this same turn. Before any other work, run bin/fm-afk-launch.sh enter --words-file <path> [--expected-return <UTC ISO 8601>] [--spend <n>] (or --words <text>). It writes state/.afk-contract at once, with no separate confirmation step, then prints the entry announcement and the record's read-back. The words are the whole mandate: bin/fm-afk-contract.sh records them exactly as given, with no clause fields, verbs, ids, or merge-grant list, and by the captain's mandate no parser, tokenizer, classifier, or grammar reads them anywhere. Read bin/fm-afk-contract.sh --help for the flags rather than memorizing them. Plain /afk with no words is a valid entry with no mandate; the announcement says no instructions were recorded. Re-invoking /afk while already away with no new words is a refresh and leaves the standing record untouched; new words replace the mandate at once, preserve the original session entry, and archive the superseded words for the return brief.
2. Per harness, after the record exists:
   • Pi and pi-signed: nothing to launch; go on to the announcement. The away daemon is no longer launched on Pi; the ordinary supervision session (docs/pi-supervision-branch.md) keeps running with the record present, and bin/fm-afk-launch.sh start refuses on these harnesses. With the record present main is parked: the supervision branch takes every safe actionable wake, captain outcomes accumulate for the return brief, and main's standing authority relocates to the branch through the guarded scripts (docs/pi-supervision-branch.md "Postures"); only a wake the branch declines (including a broken branch or unsafe scan) or a watcher failure wakes main. /quiet needs nothing extra on Pi: the attended branch already keeps routine wakes out of this conversation, so quiet-while-present is the attended posture's own shape there.
   • A home that runs the supervision host (a Claude home unless config/supervision-host-off opts it out, or a Cursor, OpenCode, omp, Grok, or Codex home with config/supervision-host and no opt-out; docs/configuration.md "Supervision host"): nothing to launch for /afk; go on to the announcement. The supervision host (docs/supervision-host.md) is the away session there: it runs the branch's contract on a headless engine under the record while main is parked, and bin/fm-afk-launch.sh start and start-native refuse the away daemon on that home. If enter printed a Supervision host: no engine ... line, every away wake reaches this conversation instead; say so in the announcement. /quiet enters nothing there where the attended host runs, and otherwise still launches the daemon below (the quiet skill's quiet-check decides).
   • Harness WITH a native in-pane tracked-background tool (claude's and grok's, on a home that does not run the supervision host): run bin/fm-afk-launch.sh start-native, then run FM_AFK_STATE_PREPARED=1 bin/fm-afk-start.sh through that native tool. This is a deliberate no-separate-terminal exception because the harness-hosted job creates no terminal or layout mutation, and a shell launcher cannot invoke a harness-native background tool. If the native launch fails, run bin/fm-afk-launch.sh stop to roll back the prepared lifecycle. Do not wrap it in nohup ... & (Codex/herdr can reap fire-and-forget shell children after a tool call returns).
   • Every other harness (codex, opencode, omp, and cursor on a home that does not run the supervision host, and kimi): run bin/fm-afk-launch.sh start. It is the single owner of the daemon terminal: on pane backends it creates a NON-VISIBLE tracked terminal and passes the captain endpoint as FM_SUPERVISOR_TARGET so the daemon injects into the captain, not its own new pane (docs/herdr-backend.md "Away-mode supervisor support"). On the t3code backend there is no terminal to create, so start refuses and only the native path above works; a Codex captain hosted by T3 Code has no away daemon (docs/t3code-backend.md "Active limits"). Both daemon paths require the record enter wrote and share bin/fm-afk-start.sh as the daemon entry. The daemon is presence-gated: it injects escalations only while state/.afk exists, and stays quiet otherwise.
3. Announce, then read back after entry. Relay the announcement in spirit: hold-for-return only, no phone channel, your instructions are recorded and the away session will carry them out where it can, anything it is unsure of, or that needs you, waits for your return, and destructive, irreversible, and security-sensitive actions are never pre-authorizable whatever the words say. Then give your own plain-sentence restatement of the words in AGENTS.md section 9 language - what you read them as asking for, sentence by sentence, never a numbered field list - beside the expected return, the spend cap, and the one-sentence reach announcement. Say plainly which sentence, if any, you could not act on while away (a red merge, a discard, anything on the never-set, local-only landing); it waits for their return. This read-back is informational: the record already stands, so never ask for a go or wait for a reply; a captain who wants a different reading sends /afk again with new words.
4. Do not separately arm fm-watch.sh where the daemon runs. The daemon manages the watcher as its child; the singleton lock no-ops a stray arm harmlessly. On Pi nothing changes about arming: the supervision session's own cycle continues.