autopilot

Autopilot

Contract

Field	Bound contract
Trigger	A human explicitly invokes /autopilot with a feature description and an approved execution plan.
Authority	Human-gated: previews the exact target and consequence before credentials, paid actions, data-at-rest changes, publication, deployment, remote bulk mutation, or irreversible deletion, continuing only when the invocation covers that consequence; every other write is reversible local, with version control as the rollback. Pass authorized push and PR targets to review-and-ship; do not publish directly.
Side effect	Delegates implementation, simplification, review, and finalization to their respective skills; local artifacts are written by work, commits and PR are created by review-and-ship. No mutation is performed by autopilot itself.
Done	Return DONE only after the requested close-out state is observed. Otherwise return BLOCKED with a resumable handoff.

Inputs

Required: feature description, approved plan, repository, acceptance criteria, and close-out condition.

Optional: scope limits; assigned executor; target branch, remote, and PR destination; required checks; shipping instructions. Derive an omitted value only when repository evidence gives one safe, unique answer.

Procedure

1. Parse the plan, scope, assignments, acceptance criteria, repository, required proof, shipping destination, and close-out condition. Reject contradictions and unavailable assigned executors. Done when: every required input is parsed and bound to a concrete value, contradictions are rejected with the conflicting pair named, and unavailable executors are reported; or the run stops on the first unresolvable input.
2. Confirm that the human approved the plan. If not, stop before implementation and route to planning. Done when: an approval record is confirmed; the plan was approved through plan mode or an equivalent written approval; or the run stops and routes to planning with no delegation.
3. Inspect enough repository evidence to bind the plan to exact artifacts, behavior, verification, and remote targets. Keep the campaign inside the approved scope. Done when: every plan step maps to a named repository artifact (file, directory, or remote target) and the scope boundary is stated with the artifacts inside it and the artifacts excluded from it.
4. Preview each risky consequence. Stop when authority is absent or the target is ambiguous. Done when: every credential, paid, data-at-rest, publication, deployment, remote bulk, or irreversible consequence is previewed with its exact target, or the run stops naming the absent authority or ambiguous target.
5. Delegate the bounded plan to work in orchestrated mode. Include acceptance criteria, constraints, repository evidence, required verifier, and the required structured return. work owns implementation and local verification; autopilot does not reproduce those steps. Apply the gate state machine in references/pipeline-gates.md: a failing work verifier gets one strike-the-root pass and one recheck; a second failure halts the chain. Done when: work returns a structured result with implementation summary and local verification passing, or the gate halts the chain with the verifier failure and diff recorded.
6. Delegate simplification to simplify on the completed diff. Gate: simplify exits 0, 11, or 12 with behavior preserved. Halt on exit 14 (new bloat) or 15 (mixed-concern). Done when: simplify returns exit 0, 11, or 12 with behavior preserved confirmed by its output, or the chain halts on exit 14 or 15 with the exit code and cause recorded.
7. Delegate review to review on the in-scope change. If critical or high findings remain, delegate one strike-the-root pass and re-review the changed files. Halt on residual critical or high findings. Done when: review returns zero critical and zero high findings on the changed files, or the chain halts with the residual findings listed.
8. Delegate finalization to review-and-ship. Pass the reviewed diff, explicit delegated shipping authority, branch, remote, PR destination, required checks, and shipping instructions. The finalizer owns checks, commits, publication classification, push, and PR creation or update; autopilot performs none of them. Done when: review-and-ship returns its report with checks green and PR created or updated (full mode) or commits made and push skipped (local-only), or the finalizer returns blocked with its reason.
9. Observe authorized close-out. Route any supported in-scope fix back through work in orchestrated mode, repeat affected gates, and invoke review-and-ship for each authorized update. Do not merge, deploy, or publish elsewhere without matching authority. Done when: the close-out condition named in the inputs is observed in repository or remote state, or the run stops for absent authority.
10. Return the terminal classification and include the finalizer report. The gate and handoff formats in references/pipeline-gates.md are binding. Done when: the terminal result is DONE with the finalizer report attached and close-out state quoted, or BLOCKED with the failed stage, reason, and next action named.