relay-intake

Relay Intake

Use this skill when /relay cannot safely bypass straight to planning.

When Intake Is Required

Run intake when any of these are true:

• the request is free-form or ambiguous
• the task may contain multiple steps or multiple leaves
• no stable Done Criteria anchor exists yet
• the issue/task text is too broad to review safely as-is

Bypass intake only for a single relay-ready task with a trustworthy review anchor already available.

Output Contract

Persist all of the following under ~/.relay/requests/<repo-slug>/<request-id>/:

• request artifact: ../<request-id>.md
• raw request: raw-request.md
• relay-ready handoffs: relay-ready/<leaf-id>.md
• frozen Done Criteria snapshots: done-criteria/<leaf-id>.md
• append-only events: events.jsonl

The request artifact frontmatter may also carry:

• readiness.clarity
• readiness.granularity
• readiness.dependency
• readiness.verifiability
• readiness.risk
• next_action
• leaf_count
• paths.handoff + paths.done_criteria for single-leaf requests
• paths.handoffs + paths.done_criteria for multi-leaf requests
• decomposition.leaf_order
• decomposition.dependencies

Each normalized handoff must contain:

• request_id
• leaf_id
• title
• goal
• order
• depends_on
• in_scope
• out_of_scope
• assumptions
• done_criteria_path
• escalation_conditions

Persistence Step

Write a JSON contract file with:

• source.kind
• request_text
• either handoff for single-leaf or handoffs[] for multi-leaf
• per leaf: leaf_id, title, goal, order
• optional per leaf: depends_on
• per leaf: in_scope, out_of_scope, assumptions
• per leaf: done_criteria_markdown, escalation_conditions

Persist it with:

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/persist-request.js --repo . --contract-file /tmp/relay-intake-contract.json --json

Optional contract fields:

• readiness.clarity: high | medium | low
• readiness.granularity: single_task | multi_task | unclear
• readiness.dependency: none | internal | external
• readiness.verifiability: high | medium | low
• readiness.risk: low | medium | high

Preflight shaping stays append-only in events.jsonl. Use the portable intake event types:

• proposal_presented
• question_asked
• question_answered
• proposal_accepted
• proposal_edited

Track the immediate follow-up as next_action on the request artifact. Do not create a second state machine for intake.

Downstream Handoff

After persistence succeeds:

1. use relay-ready/<leaf-id>.md as the source-of-truth input for relay-plan
2. dispatch with:

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../relay-dispatch/scripts/dispatch.js . \
  -b <branch> \
  --prompt-file <dispatch-prompt-path> \
  --rubric-file <rubric-path-from-relay-plan> \
  --request-id <request-id> \
  --leaf-id <leaf-id> \
  --done-criteria-file <done-criteria-path>

1. for multi-leaf requests, dispatch leaves in decomposition.leaf_order, respecting depends_on
2. let relay-review read the frozen snapshot from the run manifest anchor

Do not create a second lifecycle. Intake stops once the relay-ready contract is persisted.