Update Work Item

!accelerator config context --skill update-work-item --fail-safe !accelerator config agents --fail-safe

If no "Agent Names" section appears above, use these defaults: accelerator:reviewer, accelerator:codebase-locator, accelerator:codebase-analyser, accelerator:codebase-pattern-finder, accelerator:documents-locator, accelerator:documents-analyser, accelerator:web-search-researcher.

Work items directory: !accelerator config path work --fail-safe

Work Item Template

The following template defines the work item schema and field defaults. Hint values are extracted at runtime via work template-hints.

!accelerator config template work-item --fail-safe

You are tasked with updating frontmatter fields on an existing work item. This skill supports status transitions, priority changes, tag management, parent assignment, title changes, and any other frontmatter field edit. No status transition logic is enforced — the user decides what's valid. A future feature may add user-configurable transition graphs; this skill predates that feature.

Step 1: Identify Target Work Item

Parse the first argument and resolve via the configured pattern's resolver:

accelerator work resolve <argument>

The resolver respects work.id_pattern and accepts paths, full IDs (PROJ-0042), and bare numbers (legacy or pattern-shape).

• Exit 0: stdout is the absolute path; use it.
• Exit 1: input was unrecognised. Print "Unrecognised input '<argument>' — pass a path, a full ID, or a bare number." and exit.
• Exit 2: ambiguous match. The resolver lists every candidate with a source-category tag. Show the list and ask the user to disambiguate by re-running with a full ID or path.
• Exit 3: no match. Print "No work item matching <argument>." and exit.
• Exit 6: the argument names a real file outside the managed work directory. Print the resolver's error, offer to run /list-work-items, and exit.
• No argument: ask the user which work item to update. Accept the response and run the resolver against it.

Step 2: Read Current Frontmatter

Read the target file. Extract frontmatter between --- delimiters.

• If the first line is not ---: print "Error: <filename> has no YAML frontmatter. Add a '---' line as the first line of the file, then re-run." and exit. Use the resolved filename, not a glob pattern.
• If --- opens but never closes: print "Error: <filename> has unclosed YAML frontmatter. Add a '---' line after the last frontmatter key, then re-run." and exit.

Parse field/value pairs from the frontmatter. Preserve the original key order for diff rendering in Step 4.

Step 3: Interpret Operation

Parse the remaining arguments (after the work item reference) as one or more field operations. If no operation arguments were provided, show the current frontmatter and ask which field(s) to change.

Each recognised operation is recorded as a pending work update flag (--set, --add-tag, --remove-tag, --append, or --remove) rather than applied immediately — Step 4 previews the combined effect, and Step 5 issues the single work update call that actually writes.

Arguments are parsed left-to-right using these rules:

3.1 Tag operations

add tag <value> / remove tag <value> — record a pending --add-tag <value> / --remove-tag <value> flag. Preview the effect against the current tags list already read in Step 2 (add: append if absent; remove: drop if present). The "No-op detection" rule below applies the same way as for any other field.

3.2 List-field operations

add <field> <value> / remove <field> <value> where <field> is one of blocks, blocked_by, derived_from, relates_to — record a pending --append <field>=<value> / --remove <field>=<value> flag. Preview against the current list already read in Step 2, the same way as tag operations.

3.3 Structured field operations

<field> <value> where <field> is a known scalar frontmatter field name from the template (e.g. status ready, priority high, parent 0001, title "New title") — record a pending --set <field>=<value> flag. The next token after the field name is consumed as the value. Quoted strings are treated as a single value.

3.4 Field-only hint elicitation

A known field name as the last token with no following value triggers hint elicitation. Call work template-hints:

accelerator work template-hints <field>

Present the returned values as examples: "Common statuses: draft, ready, in-progress, review, done, blocked, abandoned. What would you like to set?" Accept any value the user provides, including values not in the hint list. If the command returns no hints, skip the hint list and simply ask for a value.

3.5 Natural language

Anything that does not match rules 3.1–3.4 (e.g. "mark as done", "set priority to high", "add backend tag") — interpret into one of the structured shapes above and echo the interpretation explicitly: "Interpreted as: status → done" so the user can correct before confirming.

Disambiguation

If the token sequence is ambiguous, ask the user for clarification rather than guessing. Present the possible interpretations and let the user choose.

Special field rules

id (own-identity) — hard-blocked: recognise an attempted edit to id (or the legacy work_item_id alias) before gathering a diff preview. Run accelerator work update <path> --set id=<value> directly and print its stderr verbatim — the CLI rejects it with the own-identity error, pointing to file rename (jj mv) as the correct approach. No diff, no confirmation prompt.

date — warned: inform the user that date records the work item's creation time and is typically not edited, then use the AskUserQuestion tool with two options:

1. Yes, proceed anyway — proceed through the normal diff-and-confirm flow
2. No, cancel — print "No changes applied." and exit

parent — canonicalised: normalise the value via

accelerator work canonicalise-id <input>

before writing. The canonicaliser produces the full ID under the configured pattern, quoted as a string. Examples:

• Default {number:04d}: 1 → "0001", 42 → "0042".
• {key}-{number:04d} with key: PROJ: 1 → "PROJ-0001", PROJ-0042 → "PROJ-0042", 0042 (legacy) → "PROJ-0042" (canonical form).

No-op detection

If the computed new value equals the current value:

• Single-op: print "No change needed: <field> is already '<value>'." and exit. No diff, no write.
• Multi-op: note the no-op field informally ("status is already 'ready' — skipping"), exclude it from the diff, and continue with the remaining changes. If ALL operations are no-ops, print the combined "no change needed" message and exit.

Non-template values

If a value is not one of the template's default hints, add a single-line informational note above the diff: "Note: '<value>' is not one of the template's default statuses; proceeding anyway." No enforcement — the user confirms, the skill writes.

Step 4: Preview and Confirm

Produce a diff showing only the lines that change, before and after:

-status: draft
+status: ready
-priority: medium
+priority: high

Body label sync

When a field that has a corresponding body label changes, scan the body for the first line outside any code fence (between ``` delimiters) whose text starts with the matching label. If found, include the body line change in the diff preview. If no such line exists, do not inject one.

Field-to-label mapping:

• status ↔ **Status**:
• kind ↔ **Kind**:
• priority ↔ **Priority**:
• author ↔ **Author**:

Convert the frontmatter value to display text using this deterministic rule: replace hyphens with spaces and apply title case (capitalise each word, keeping small words lowercase unless they open the phrase). Small words: a, an, and, as, at, but, by, for, in, nor, of, on, or, so, the, to, up, vs, yet. Single words are simply capitalised (draft → Draft). Multi-word hyphenated values become spaced title case (waiting-on-legal → Waiting on Legal, in-progress → In Progress).

Title sync

If the title is changing, include the body H1 change in the diff too. The H1 is the first # line in the body after the frontmatter. Preserve any prefix before the first : in the existing H1 (e.g. # 0042: Old title or # ADR Work item: Old title) and substitute the new title after the prefix:

-# 0042: Old title
+# 0042: New title

If the existing H1 has no : separator, replace the full heading text after # with the new title. Only the first H1 is touched.

Confirmation prompt

Print the diff, then use the AskUserQuestion tool with two options:

1. Yes, apply changes — write the changes to disk
2. No, cancel — print "No changes applied." and exit without writing

Field insertion preview

When a field does not exist in the target work item's frontmatter (e.g. adding priority: to a legacy work item), the diff preview shows a pure addition: +priority: high.

Step 5: Write

1. Frontmatter changes first — issue one call assembling every pending operation accumulated in Step 3:

   accelerator work update <path> \
     --set <field>=<value> ... \
     --add-tag <value> ... --remove-tag <value> ... \
     --append <field>=<value> ... --remove <field>=<value> ...

   Omit any flag category with no pending operations. A non-zero exit means nothing was written (the CLI validates every key before applying any of them) — print the stderr message and exit.

2. Body label syncs second — update the matching body lines using the Edit tool. work update only ever touches frontmatter.
3. Title H1 sync — if the title changed, update the body H1 using the Edit tool.

If a body sync Edit fails after frontmatter was already written, print: "Warning: frontmatter updated but body sync failed for **<Label>**: — check the file manually. To revert, run: jj restore <filename>". Do not attempt to revert the frontmatter change.

After writing, print a confirmation:

Updated <filename>:
  status: draft → ready

Validate the frontmatter: after writing, run

accelerator corpus frontmatter validate --file <filename>

If it exits non-zero, the document violates the canonical frontmatter standard; report the emitted violation and fix the frontmatter before completing.

Quality Guidelines

• Confirmation required: never write without explicit user confirmation via the y/n prompt.
• No transition enforcement: any status value the user supplies is acceptable. Arbitrary transitions (draft → done, skipping intermediate states) are allowed without warning.
• Hint values are suggestions, not constraints: when surfacing field hints via work template-hints, present them as examples. Accept any value the user provides.
• Own-identity is immutable: hard-block edits to id (or to work_item_id on legacy files) before gathering a diff preview, and let work update's own exit-1 error surface directly.
• date is guarded: warn before editing the creation timestamp; allow if the user confirms.
• All frontmatter mutation via work update: scalar fields, tags, and typed-linkage lists are all applied in the single Step 5 work update call, which owns parsing, mutation, and canonical re-serialisation. A non-zero exit means nothing was written — print stderr and exit.
• Body label sync scope: only update the first non-code-fence occurrence of **Status**:, **Kind**:, **Priority**:, or **Author**:. Do not inject labels into work items that lack them. Do not update occurrences inside code fences.
• Resilient to malformed frontmatter: abort cleanly on missing or unclosed frontmatter. Error messages use the resolved filename and match work show's phrasing.
• Legacy work items supported: work items with unusual kind or status values (e.g. kind: adr-creation-task, status: todo) are fully updatable. No migration is offered or required.
• Ambiguous globs: if multiple work items match a number glob, list them and ask the user to choose. Never silently pick one.
• No file renaming: own-identity edits (id, or work_item_id on legacy files) are hard-blocked. Point the user to jj mv + manual frontmatter edit for renumbering.

!accelerator config instructions update-work-item --fail-safe