Project Tracking

$project-tracking is a deterministic, non-authoritative projection helper.

It does not own lifecycle state, semantic authority, delivery focus, scheduling, dependencies, hierarchy, completion, or artifact membership semantics.

Invocation boundary

Project projection is intentionally eventually consistent during active delivery. Invoke this helper only at:

1. Mandatory Spec completion reconciliation — $spec-merge-cleanup reconstructs the complete completed-Spec lineage and supplies one desired projection batch.
2. Explicit human-requested board reconciliation — the active workflow reconstructs the requested authoritative artifact universe and supplies one desired projection batch.

Ordinary lifecycle transitions do not synchronize the Project. Do not persist a pending Project-update queue/flag/label/comment ledger.

Repository/Project setup, schema changes, historical backfills, or other administrative conversion work are outside this runtime skill.

Input contract

The caller supplies one desired base projection per formal artifact:

• GitHub issue URL;
• Artifact Type;
• Workflow State;
• base Next Skill;
• base Work Status;
• Completed On only for Complete;
• current Project Delivery State for every active formal artifact: in-focus | eligible | blocked | independent;
• optional Area / Priority only when the caller intentionally owns those presentation changes.

The caller reconstructs the complete authoritative artifact universe. This skill never crawls Project rows to decide what ought to exist.

Authority rules

Never infer lifecycle/delivery truth from:

• Project fields or membership;
• issue open/closed state alone;
• labels;
• saved-view position;
• hierarchy alone;
• prior conversation.

Project state is read only to detect and repair projection drift.

Delivery context comes from $project-delivery-management for Wayfinder-managed artifacts or explicit durable Independent classification. Ambiguous governance is invalid rather than silently treated as Independent.

Delivery projection

Map current delivery context to Delivery State:

Delivery State never establishes focus, frontier eligibility, dependency state, or lifecycle authorization.

Base projection invariants

Validate before mutation:

• Complete -> base Work Status = Done, Next Skill = None, authoritative non-empty Completed On;
• Superseded -> base Work Status = Done, Next Skill = None, Completed On = None, and explicit durable retirement authority supplied by the caller;
• all other states -> Completed On = None;
• requested select values must already exist in current Project schema;
• Artifact Type, Workflow State, and base Next Skill must satisfy the current route table below.

Do not infer Completed On from issue closed_at.

Current base route table

Every listed Artifact Type also permits Superseded / None with explicit retirement authority.

Context-sensitive None means downstream children own the next executable action; it does not mean the parent is complete.

Reject unlisted combinations rather than guessing.

Delivery overlay

Validate the base route first, then apply only delivery presentation:

• terminal Complete -> Done / None / Released;
• terminal Superseded -> Done / None / Superseded;
• Independent active artifact -> preserve base status/next skill, Delivery State Independent;
• focused Wayfinder Map -> In Progress, preserve base next skill, In Focus;
• eligible Wayfinder Map -> Ready, $project-delivery-management, Eligible;
• blocked Wayfinder Map -> Blocked, None, Denied;
• Wayfinder-managed descendant -> preserve base lifecycle status/next skill for in-focus|eligible; for delivery blocked, set visible Work Status Blocked while preserving its lifecycle next skill; project the matching Delivery State.

Delivery authorization never changes Workflow State.

Terminal contradiction checks

Caller-supplied Complete must be supported by owning lifecycle evidence. Tracker relationships may disprove completion but never establish it by absence.

At minimum reject:

• Wayfinder Map complete while a governed Spec/decision/fog remains unresolved;
• Spec complete while an implementation ticket or conventional Spec Review remains open;
• Spec Review complete while a Review Remediation Ticket remains open.

Resolve current Project and schema

Resolve exactly one open Project titled Polaris for the repository owner. Resolve its current fields once and require:

• Artifact Type;
• Workflow State;
• Next Skill;
• Work Status;
• Intake State;
• Priority;
• Area;
• Completed On;
• Delivery State.

All required single-select options used by the supplied batch must already exist. Missing Project/schema/configuration state is PROJECT TRACKING: DRIFT; this skill does not create or repair schema.

Deterministic execution

Use one reconciliation path:

validate supplied projections
-> resolve Project once
-> read schema once
-> read affected current rows once
-> add only missing members
-> establish post-membership row snapshot
-> compute one complete field-delta plan
-> submit bounded deterministic GraphQL batches
-> verify affected rows once

A recoverable membership-add failure permits at most one state-reconciled retry: re-read membership, recompute the still-missing set, and retry only that set through the same interface. This is ordinary transient-write recovery, not historical conversion.

Do not retry field batches through alternate interfaces, recompute semantic projections in response to write failures, probe CLI capability with --help, or modify Project views, automations, or schema.

If no membership or field delta exists, return SYNCED after verification.

Mutation ownership

This skill may mutate only Project membership and the supplied current projection fields. Preserve Area/Priority when omitted. Do not mutate GitHub issue lifecycle state, hierarchy, dependencies, CCL, delivery focus, branches, or repository content.

Result

Return exactly one:

PROJECT TRACKING: SYNCED
Artifacts supplied: <n>
Members added: <n>
Field changes: <n>
Verified rows: <n>

or:

PROJECT TRACKING: INVALID PROJECTION
Artifact: <identity>
Reason: <invariant failure>

or:

PROJECT TRACKING: DRIFT
Reason: <missing/ambiguous project or schema | read/write/verification failure>
Authoritative lifecycle state changed: no

Project drift never rolls back authoritative lifecycle work.