Prep nightshift

This preparation workflow is specific to Claude Code's session, permissions, and hook configuration, with Codex as its review companion. Another agent may load this skill without implementing those contracts; verify the host explicitly and do not claim the night is ready unless its permission and resume behavior matches the checks below.

Overnight, nightshift makes every call alone and logs it for the morning. This skill makes those calls with the user first, so the night spends its hours on work instead of on decisions the user might overrule, and no task ends blocked on something a minute of daytime would have settled.

Nightshift's rules live in its own file; this one only points at them, so the two cannot drift. Read ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../nightshift/SKILL.md first (or the installed nightshift skill's SKILL.md). If neither exists, stop: there is no nightshift to prepare for. The sections used below are Authority, Preflight, Plan, Task steps and Running it.

Ground rules, for the whole session:

• Ask and wait. The user is awake. End each step with what you found and the questions it raises, and wait for the answer before acting on it. Unlike nightshift, never decide a question alone.
• Change nothing unapproved. Read-only commands are fine. Every edit, commit, push, branch, or settings change waits for the user's yes to that change.
• Never start the night. Do not type, schedule, or simulate /nightshift, create its watchdog, or write its log. Only the user starts it.
• Do not do tonight's tasks. The one exception is a step the user asks to do in daytime first (step 4), which follows the project's normal workflow.

Steps

1. Preflight

Check what nightshift's Preflight and Running it need, read-only, and report one line per check, pass or fail:

• Default branch matches origin. git fetch; find the default branch (git symbolic-ref --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD prints origin/main; drop the origin/ prefix to get main); compare git rev-list --left-right --count <default>...origin/<default> (want 0 0).
• gh logged in. gh auth status.
• Codex answers. Resolve $CX as nightshift's Preflight does and run node "$CX" status --json.
• Codex stop gate off. Read config.stopReviewGate from that status output. The gate reviews the coordinator's checkout at every turn end, where nightshift changes nothing, and blocks the stop when Codex fails or takes over 15 minutes, so one outage holds every wake-up. If it is on, offer node "$CX" setup --disable-review-gate, run it only on the user's yes, and add turning it back on to the morning steps (step 6).
• Permission mode will not prompt. With nightshift's permission hook installed, a prompt ends as a blocker on that task rather than stalling the night (Running it), but every blocker is work left undone. Check that ~/.claude/settings.json runs nightshift/hooks/deny-unattended.sh for PermissionRequest and for Notification with matcher permission_prompt; without it one prompt stalls the night. Read permissions in .claude/settings.json, .claude/settings.local.json and ~/.claude/settings.json, and ask which mode the session that will run /nightshift uses. Auto mode passes; an allowlist must cover git, gh, node "$CX", the project's checks, and edits in the task worktrees (<repo-parent>/<repo-name>.nightshift/), in .nightshift/ at the repository root (the log) and in .git/info/exclude. Name what is missing; change settings only if the user asks. For missing read-only commands, ask the user to type /fewer-permission-prompts themselves; do not run it for them. It scans this account's past sessions for read-only calls that prompted and adds an allowlist to .claude/settings.json. It covers read-only calls only, so commits, pushes and edits still need auto mode or rules of their own. If they run it, show its diff in step 7 with the prepared files.
• Machine and session. Remind the user to stop the machine sleeping and to keep this session open: nightshift's watchdog lives in the session and dies with it.

For each failure, offer the fix (pull or push the default branch, gh auth login for the user to type, re-login to Codex) or say how nightshift will work around it: local branches only, or reviews left pending.

2. Confirm scope

Collect the tasks exactly where nightshift's Plan will look: TODO files, plan and roadmap files, TODO: notes those point to, and open issues if gh works. Show them as a table: task, source, the done-check nightshift would likely write, and whether it can finish overnight or will hit step 4. Ask the user to confirm, reword, remove or add.

Nightshift reads only files, so the answers must land in them. Propose each edit, then make it once approved:

• Reword vague items into a deliverable ("Plan ...", "Suggest ...", "Evaluate ... and recommend one"), so the night does not have to interpret them.
• Fence off files that must not be worked with a first line such as PAUSED until the user says otherwise: not for nightshift or Not for nightshift: <reason>. Nightshift's Plan skips any file whose first line says so.
• Pre-approve inside the task's own text what the night may do that it would otherwise skip or log, for example (approved: run each through uvx; do not add any as a dependency).

3. Find inputs the worktrees would miss

Each task runs in a worktree branched from origin/<default> (nightshift's Task steps), so it sees nothing that exists only here. Look for what a confirmed task needs among:

• untracked and ignored files: git status --porcelain --untracked-files=all --ignored;
• uncommitted changes, and commits not on origin/<default>: git log origin/<default>..<default>, git log origin/<default>..HEAD --stat (the branch you are on), git branch -vv; inputs a task needs that sit on another branch move to the default branch once approved;
• plans, decisions and constraints that live only in this conversation or in the user's head.

For each, propose committing it (a source folder such as handoff/) or capturing it in a plan file. Keep secrets and personal notes out, and say which files you left out and why.

Write the plan file as docs/plans/<name>.md, one per body of work, with:

• Source material, linked, and a line that this plan wins where they differ.
• Decisions already made by the user, opening with "Do not reopen these; log a decision only for choices this plan leaves open." End it with a Not tonight item listing every step moved out in step 4, with "Do not attempt them."
• Tasks: a table of #, task, depends on, done-check (a command or observable result), then one section per task saying exactly what to change.
• Morning steps (step 6).

Nightshift collects tasks from TODO files, plan files and issues alike, so each task must live in one place. When a plan task takes over a TODO item, propose deleting that item; when it takes over an issue, propose removing every assignment and label that makes nightshift collect it, or leave the task in the issue and out of the plan.

Steps 4 to 6 fill in the rest of the draft.

4. Flag steps outside the authority

Walk every confirmed task and plan step against nightshift's Authority. Flag each step that changes dependencies, CI, hooks (including a hooks: entry in a skill's frontmatter), or build or tool configuration; that reaches outside the repository (~/.claude files, install links, other repositories, filing external issues, deploying, sending anything); or that deletes files the user would rather decide on. List each with why it is outside, and offer:

• Do it now, in daytime. Build, test, review and commit it under the project's own workflow, so the night builds on it. It reaches the worktrees only once it is on origin/<default> (step 7).
• Move it out. Put it under Not tonight and Morning steps, and reword the task so nothing tonight depends on it.
• Let it end blocked. The task runs, stops at that step, and names the exact change under Needs you. Partial work only; say so.

5. Settle open decisions

Ask now what nightshift would otherwise decide alone and log: interpretations, design choices, which task stacks on which. Write each answer into the plan file's decisions or the task's text. The adversarial=once|thorough setting is typed by the user after /nightshift (nightshift's Preflight); recommend one, do not record it.

6. List the morning steps

In the plan file and in your reply, in order: open the log and read Morning summary and Needs you first, then close the nightshift session and start a fresh one (Running it); if step 1 turned the Codex stop gate off, turn it back on with node "$CX" setup --enable-review-gate; mark each draft PR ready for review and merge them in dependency order, retargeting any stacked PR after its base merges; then every step moved out in step 4, each with its exact command or change.

7. Commit and push after approval

Show git status and the full diff of every prepared file: plan files, edited TODO items, fenced files, committed inputs. Revise until the user approves. Commit to the default branch and push only on the user's explicit yes; this is that approval, not a standing one. Then re-check that <default> equals origin/<default> and that nothing a task needs is still untracked. Without a remote, worktrees branch from the local <default> (nightshift's Task steps), so the commit alone is enough.

8. Hand over

Summarise what is ready and what was left out. Give the command for the user to type, /nightshift or /nightshift adversarial=thorough, and repeat the step 1 reminders: permission mode, no sleep, session open. Then stop.