Setup Routines — one Q&A pass, a repo's custom routines fully reconciled Skill

Setup Routines — one Q&A pass, a repo's custom routines fully reconciled

Any team member runs /agentloop:setup-routines inside a repo that ships a routine catalog (.claude/routines/), answers a few all-defaulted questions, and gets:

Cloud routines (via the RemoteTrigger tool): create-or-update by canonical name, per-runner stagger, per-trigger git sources, prompt rendered from the repo's templates
Durable local cron jobs (system crontab + dedicated worktree/clone, optional)
Reconciliation of what already exists: canonical-name matches are updated in place; unknown routines are listed for the human (the API has no delete)

★ Interactive skill — never run unattended. Denied by a deny-interactive-unattended hook = you are in an unattended environment → stop and say "/agentloop:setup-routines needs a human present". Do NOT silently apply defaults: registering schedules is a durable outward action.

Scope split: /agentloop:fleet-setup owns the generic per-repo issue-sweep/pr-sweep loop (driver-based, multi-repo). This skill owns the routines a repo declares in its own catalog — producers, QA sweeps, nightly deploys, GC jobs, anything repo-shaped. Never schedule issue/pr-sweep from here (it would double-fire against the fleet and the templates have long since diverged).

The catalog contract (what the consuming repo provides)

Everything repo-specific lives in the repo, not in this skill:

.claude/routines/
  catalog.json        # the machine-readable routine list (schema below)
  templates/*.md      # one prompt template per routine, {{RUNNER}} etc. placeholders

catalog.json schema (all routine fields except name/template/cron optional):

{
  "repo": "Owner/repo",                     // canonical slug, used for trigger sources
  "envSetupScript": ["line1", "line2"],     // the environment's setup-script lines (printed, see Step 2c)
  "identity": { "gitUserName": true },      // Step 2 renders `git config --global user.name <runner>` advice into report
  "presenceRegister": "CMD {{RUNNER}} {{ROUTINES}} {{MODEL}} {{LOCAL}}",  // optional post-reconcile hook, run from repo root
  "routines": [
    {
      "name": "issue-graph producer hourly",  // canonical trigger name — the reconcile key
      "template": "templates/producer.md",
      "cron": "{{MIN}} * * * *",              // {{MIN}} = (minBase + runner offset) % 60
      "minBase": 45,
      "allowedTools": ["Bash", "Read", "Glob", "Grep"],
      "model": "claude-sonnet-5",             // default; Step 1 lets the user override
      "extraSources": ["Owner/other-repo"],   // additional git sources → per-trigger scope (see doctrine below)
      "clearMcpConnections": true,            // script-only routines don't need inherited MCP connectors
      "singleton": true,                      // team should run exactly one — affects Step 1 default
      "singletonProbe": "some read-only shell command",  // optional; output shown to inform the default
      "defaultOn": false,                     // Step 1 pre-selection when the runner has no existing trigger
      "vars": { "ENV": ["test", "staging"] }, // extra template placeholders; user picks/notes a value in Step 1
      "localOnly": false,                     // true = never a cloud trigger (crontab only), e.g. GC jobs
      "local": {                              // optional local-crontab form of this routine
        "command": "bun scripts/foo.ts",      // run inside the dedicated checkout; pure-script routines skip `claude -p`
        "lockName": "foo.lock"
      },
      "envPrereqs": ["Network Access: *.example.dev", "env var FOO_BAR (optional)"],
      "note": "one per team; shown in Step 1 option description"
    }
  ]
}

No catalog → stop. Tell the user this repo declares no routines and point at this schema. Do not invent routines.

Core design (why it looks like this)

Prompt templates are the single source of truth, versioned in the consuming repo. Updating a template + re-running this skill = the team-wide upgrade path. This is what ends per-person prompt drift.
Stagger is built in: minute offset = cksum(runner) % 13, added to each routine's minBase. N runners of the same routine start on different minutes; pair with any in-repo ordering rotation for processing-order diversity.
Local jobs never use the shared checkout — a cron git checkout main inside the directory a human is working in destroys their in-flight state (it has happened). Local routines run in a dedicated worktree (disk-cheap) or a standalone clone (fully isolated — the only safe option when the dev machine IS the routine machine).
Durable local scheduling = system crontab, not CronCreate (session-scoped, 7-day expiry — cannot carry a persistent routine).
Identity is config, not env: export ARC_AGENT_RUNNER=... does NOT persist across an agent's Bash calls, so identity scripts invoked deep inside skills fall back to the sandbox's git user.name (e.g. "Claude") and produce phantom-runner attribution. Templates should (a) keep inline <ENV>=<runner> prefixes on the commands that support them AND (b) run git config --global user.name <runner> once at session start — the config file persists across Bash calls and every fallback chain ends there. Safe for routines that never commit; for committing routines weigh the author-name change first.

Multi-repo doctrine (measured 2026-07-23, arc#2293)

Environments are shells; sources are per-trigger. The platform provisions each session from the trigger's session_context.sources: those repos get cloned AND define the session's GitHub credential scope. One environment (setup script pasted once) serves any number of repos' routines.
Credential scope is frozen per session — a running session cannot widen it, and ad-hoc cloning of undeclared private repos is refused by design. A routine that needs a reference repo must DECLARE it (extraSources); "clone whatever whenever" does not port from local. Cross-repo reporting equally requires the target repo in sources.
Consequence for presence: a worker scoped to repo X cannot write a heartbeat to a board issue living in repo Y. GitHub-issue-based presence boards are structurally incomplete in a multi-repo fleet; a space-based presence sink (reachable from any scope) is the uniform channel. Catalog envPrereqs should include its network-access entry.
Trigger-level plugin fields (enabled_plugins: array of "plugin@marketplace" strings; extra_marketplaces: array of {name, source:{source:"git", url}}) validate but do not yet persist server-side. Each reconcile run, set them anyway and check the get echo: the day they persist, tell the user the environment setup-script lines are obsolete.

Step 0 — collect facts (all cheap, before any question)

git config user.name; whoami        # runner default: lowercased first name, else whoami
uname -s                            # Darwin → shlock, Linux → flock (Step 3)
crontab -l 2>/dev/null | sed -n '/# <slug>-routines:begin/,/# <slug>-routines:end/p'
cat .claude/routines/catalog.json   # the contract; stop if absent

Load RemoteTrigger (ToolSearch) and {action:"list"}:

Canonical hits (exact name match against the catalog) → update set. Keep their id, environment_id, events[].data.uuid, mcp_connections.
Everything else → legacy set: report name + cron + one-line summary; the API has no delete — the human handles them at claude.ai/code/routines.
environment_id default: any existing trigger's value. None at all (first-time user) → obtain via the /schedule skill's environment injection, then return here.
Tool unavailable (pure-local CLI) → skip cloud entirely, do local only, and say so.

For each catalog routine with singleton: true: run its singletonProbe (if any) and inspect the trigger list for other holders. Held by someone else and fresh → default unselected, name the holder. Held by this runner → default selected (update path).

Step 1 — AskUserQuestion (≤4 questions, all defaulted, ask once)

runner (header "Runner"): derived value (Recommended) / whoami.
routines (header "Routines", multiSelect): one option per non-localOnly catalog entry. Default = defaultOn, overridden to ON where Step 0 found the runner's own existing trigger. Descriptions come from note + envPrereqs + singleton status. Routines with vars: the option description names the default value; the user overrides via the option note (each var value = its own canonical name, e.g. deploy staging nightly).
local jobs (header "Local"): none (Recommended when cloud covers it) / dedicated worktree (routine-only machines) / standalone clone (dev machine = routine machine — the only safe option there; a worktree shares branch refs with the main checkout and a cron git checkout main will steal main from the human's session).
model (header "Model"): catalog default (Recommended) / alternatives.

Honor any value typed in an option note. Ask once, then execute — the questions ARE the confirmation.

Minute offset (deterministic, replaces {{MIN}}):

off=$(( $(printf '%s' "$runner" | cksum | cut -d' ' -f1) % 13 ))

Step 2 — cloud reconcile (each selected routine)

Render the template: {{RUNNER}} → runner, {{MIN}} → computed minute, each catalog vars key → chosen value.

Exists (canonical hit) → {action:"update", trigger_id} with the complete job_config (original environment_id + events[].data.uuid, new message content / model / cron / sources). Update is whole-object replacement — omitting a field wipes it. {action:"get"} first if anything is uncertain. Never touch mcp_connections.
New → {action:"create"}: fresh lowercase v4 uuid, Step 0's environment_id, allowed_tools and sources ([repo] + extraSources) from the catalog. Then for clearMcpConnections routines: {action:"update", body:{clear_mcp_connections:true}} (create inherits the account's connectors by default).
Set enabled_plugins/extra_marketplaces per the doctrine section and note whether they persisted.
Record each returned next_run_at for the report. run exists for an immediate smoke-fire — offer it, don't force it.

Step 2b — presence register (only if the catalog declares it)

Run the catalog's presenceRegister command from the repo root with {{ROUTINES}} = name=cron;… for everything just reconciled. Absent script/board must never block the main flow.

Step 2c — environment prerequisites (no API — print, once per environment)

Environments (setup script, Network Access, env vars) have no API. Print one copy-paste block and mark it one-time per environment, not per routine:

the catalog's envSetupScript lines verbatim (typically the two-line plugin install; suggest #<tag> pinning on the marketplace URL when the user wants reproducibility)
every selected routine's envPrereqs, deduplicated
where to paste: claude.ai/code → the environment → setup script / Network Access

If Step 0 showed existing healthy triggers on this environment, say the block is likely already applied and this is a checklist, not a to-do.

Step 3 — local crontab reconcile (only if Step 1 chose local)

Applies to localOnly routines and any selected routine with a local block.

3a. Dedicated working directory

REPO=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel); SLUG=$(basename "$REPO"); BASE=~/.${SLUG}-routines
mkdir -p "$BASE/logs"
git -C "$REPO" worktree add --detach "$BASE/wt" origin/main 2>/dev/null || true; WT="$BASE/wt"
# standalone clone variant (dev machine = routine machine):
#   git clone "$(git -C "$REPO" remote get-url origin)" "$BASE/repo"; WT="$BASE/repo"
cd "$WT" && <repo's install command>       # hooks/scripts need dependencies present

Then, all still required (details unchanged from long experience — apply as-is):

Trust dialog: mark hasTrustDialogAccepted for $WT in ~/.claude.json, else the repo's permissions.allow is ignored in headless runs.
Memory symlink: auto-memory namespaces by cwd — symlink the main repo's memory dir into the worktree's namespace (/→-, .→- encoding) or the routine runs blind.
Native toolchain allowlist: append Bash(<tool> *) entries to user-level ~/.claude/settings.json for tools actually installed (swift/xcodebuild/gradle/…), else headless runs silently skip native work.

3b. Credentials on macOS (cron cannot reach the GUI keychain)

claude setup-token → extract sk-ant-oat… → write $BASE/env (mode 600) with CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN, GH_TOKEN (env -u GITHUB_TOKEN gh auth token), and CLAUDE_CODE_PRINT_BG_WAIT_CEILING_MS=0 (hard requirement everywhere: the default 600s ceiling kills long background work mid-round and the round dies without a heartbeat). Prefer a launchd LaunchAgent over cron on macOS when acceptable — it runs inside the GUI session and needs none of this.

3c. Crontab marker block (idempotent: delete old block, write new)

One # <slug>-routines:begin/end block: PATH line, then one row per local routine from its catalog local.command, wrapped in flock -n (Linux) / shlock (macOS) with logs under $BASE/logs/. Pure-script routines run bun/their command directly — no claude -p, no token needed. Never crontab -r.

Step 4 — report (single final message)

| routine | where | action | cron | next run | |---|---|---|---|---|

Plus: the Step 2c prerequisites block; the legacy list ("API has no delete — handle at claude.ai/code/routines"); singleton reminders for anything left unselected; and — if the trigger-level plugin fields persisted this run — the note that the environment setup script can now be emptied.

Constraints & sharp edges

Cloud cron minimum interval is 1 hour (*/30 is rejected); minutes must be staggered via the offset formula.
Update replaces the whole job_config — always send it complete.
Never delete unknown routines (you can't); list them for the human.
Crontab writes use the marker block only; never touch anything outside it.
Local loops merge nothing: PRs authored by the runner's own gh identity cannot be self-approved, so branch-protected repos stop at "PR ready". That is a safety property.
Re-running this skill after any template/catalog change IS the upgrade path — it reconciles, never blindly recreates. Idempotent.

Agent Skills: Setup Routines — one Q&A pass, a repo's custom routines fully reconciled

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