vale-ai-tells: Skill for Claude Code

Watch a pull request

Wait for the checks on a pull request to settle, then say what happened. This skill ends when the checks stop moving. Fixing what failed belongs to fix-pr, and merging belongs to merge-pr.

A guard hook runs alongside and refuses the watching forms this skill wraps, so a hand-rolled poll can't quietly replace the watcher. A plain gh pr checks for a one-off look stays open.

Which pull request

$ARGUMENTS names the pull request number when the caller knows it. An empty value means whatever is open for the current branch.

Step 1: watch

Arm the watcher through the Monitor tool, which turns each line the script prints into a notification:

Monitor({
  command: "bash .claude/skills/watch-pr/scripts/watch-checks.sh <number>",
  description: "checks on pull request <number>",
  timeout_ms: 1800000,
  persistent: false,
})

Omit the number to use the current branch's open pull request.

Monitor is the right tool rather than a blocking call, because the script emits one line per check the moment that check settles. A failure arrives while the slower jobs are still going, so the diagnosis starts earlier and no turn goes to waiting. The script exits once nothing is pending, which ends the watch by itself.

Never poll gh pr checks in a loop of your own. Each look costs a turn and reports a state that has already moved on.

The lines to expect:

• WATCHING #<number> once, at the start
• PASS <job>, SKIP <job>, or FAIL <job> <run link>, one per check as it settles
• ALL GREEN #<number>, FAILED #<number> with N failing check(s), or TIMEOUT #<number> to close

Running the same command through Bash also works and blocks until the same ending, with the exit code reporting the outcome: 0 all passed, 1 something failed, 2 the wait ran out. Prefer Monitor. Reach for the blocking form only where the next step can't start until the answer arrives.

Override the bounds through the environment when a run is unusually slow. PR_CHECKS_TIMEOUT sets the whole wait and PR_CHECKS_INTERVAL the poll spacing, both in seconds. Keep timeout_ms past PR_CHECKS_TIMEOUT so the script reports its own timeout rather than dying at the tool's.