worktrees

Worktrees Orchestration Protocol

The worktrees skill provides an opinionated, safe orchestration protocol for managing Git worktrees as isolated coding lanes. Its value is giving the Orchestrator a consistent OMO workflow for parallel agents, risky experiments, integration review, and cleanup.

Core Contract

This is an orchestrator-only workflow. Other specialists such as @fixer or @designer can be assigned tasks inside a worktree lane, but the Orchestrator owns lane planning, branch/path selection, file ownership, delegation, diff validation, integration, and cleanup.

All worktrees reside under the default path:

.slim/worktrees/<slug>/

Do not create worktrees as sibling directories of the main repository.

State Tracking (.slim/worktrees.json)

Use the optional local metadata manifest .slim/worktrees.json to maintain structural tracking:

{
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-14T00:00:00.000Z",
  "lanes": [
    {
      "slug": "feature-auth-v2",
      "branch": "omos/feature-auth-v2",
      "path": ".slim/worktrees/feature-auth-v2",
      "base": "main",
      "purpose": "refactor authentication flow to use OAuth2",
      "owner": "orchestrator",
      "status": "active",
      "areas": ["src/auth", "src/config"],
      "createdAt": "2026-06-14T12:00:00.000Z"
    }
  ]
}

If .slim/worktrees.json does not exist, create it when initializing a lane, and keep it updated as lanes are transitioned, integrated, or pruned. Treat it as local workflow metadata by default; ask before making it part of a committed project convention.

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Safety Guidelines

Before executing any Git mutation command, the Orchestrator must observe the following guards:

1. Pre-Flight Checklist

• Confirm the current directory is inside a Git repository.
• Check the current branch, base branch, and dirty/uncommitted state.
• Inspect the output of git worktree list to avoid path or branch conflicts.
• Ensure the branch name (e.g. omos/<slug> or custom project convention) does not already exist locally or on remote.
• Ensure .slim/worktrees/ is ignored by Git before creating nested worktrees.