stay-busy

Stay busy

Big picture

One-line principle: when stuck, find a solution. When the manager has no obvious next plan task, the answer is more dispatched work, not idle.

Finish the obvious comes first. This skill is layered on top of the "Finish the obvious" core philosophy in docs/REPO_STYLE.md. If a plan task, in-flight workstream, or open verification step still has obvious next actions, the manager takes those FIRST. stay-busy fires only after the obvious queue is empty. See ## Finish before expanding for the gate that enforces this, and Workflow step 2 for where the gate runs.

The failure this skill prevents: the manager spends a few minutes making a plan, then sits idle for hours or days. A short task gets finished and the manager stops, even though the user wanted continued exploration.

This skill exists to inflate scope by roughly two orders of magnitude when the user is away from the keyboard, overnight or across several days. They are going to bed, stepping out, or running a session unattended, and they want to wake up to finished artifacts, not a queue of pending questions to answer.

Success = completed work the user can read on returning. Failure = a stack of "should I do X?" prompts, or a milestone declared done while obvious follow-on testing was skipped.

Four anchor activities, named by the user, define the work stay-busy generates:

Write up results. Synthesize completed runs into reports that compare, summarize, or rank. Long-form (25-100 page) reports are a valid single workstream when enough evidence has accumulated to synthesize.
A/B (or A/B/C/D) testing. Run methodologies, configurations, or alternative implementations side by side and report the comparison.
Side-quest experiments. Launch subagents to explore tangents that may inform future work, labeled SIDE QUEST.
Audit the codebase. Read-only correctness, style, contract, and coverage sweeps producing inspectable artifacts.

Default workstream shape in away-mode is expansive, not small. "Small, concrete recovery task" is wrong when the user is asleep. The right shape is a test suite spanning N methodologies, a stress matrix across M configurations, an audit covering K subsystems, a screenshot gallery across V viewports.

Two failure modes to prevent:

Passive waiting. Manager idles, asks the user "what next?", or marks the milestone done while obvious follow-on testing remains. Especially bad while the user is away: morning inbox of pending questions.
Reckless motion. Manager invents busywork, expands scope into architecture changes, weakens tests, or edits production code to make red turn green.

Every rule below maps to one of those two failure modes. See references/big_picture.md for the full lifecycle diagram, the worked overnight example, the composition map with sibling skills, and the mapping to the core philosophies in docs/REPO_STYLE.md.

Core principle

Stay busy by producing evidence, not by creating motion. When the delegate-manager-to-subagents workflow would otherwise idle, this skill generates safe, parallel, evidence-producing workstreams with explicit blocked fallbacks and a final handoff contract.

Supporting rules:

Busy is invalid unless it produces evidence or removes a blocker.
If the next safe action is implied by the plan, current failure, current milestone, or acceptance criteria, take it. Document the assumption and continue. (Operational form of the "Finish the obvious" core philosophy in docs/REPO_STYLE.md.)

Vocabulary contract

stay-busy uses the manager's vocabulary so output composes natively with delegate-manager-to-subagents.

Concept	Term
Atomic unit	task
Parallel grouping	workstream
Doer	subagent
Verb	dispatch
Status label: complete, no concerns	`DONE`
Status label: complete but reviewer should inspect a flagged artifact	`DONE_WITH_CONCERNS`
Status label: blocked by missing information (not a hard boundary)	`NEEDS_CONTEXT`
Status label: blocked by a hard boundary	`BLOCKED`
Annotation (not a status): optional evidence-producing side project work	`SIDE QUEST`

SIDE QUEST is a task-level annotation, not a workstream status. A side quest task still carries one of the four status labels above.

When to use

User asks to keep manager/orchestrator/subagents busy.
User asks the manager to stay productive over a multi-day stretch.
User is stepping away from the keyboard (going to bed, leaving for the day, running unattended) and wants finished artifacts on return.
Project blocked but safe parallel work exists.
User complains agent is waiting too much.
End-of-turn, when the next response would otherwise be "waiting for guidance" AND an active delegate-manager-to-subagents plan is in flight AND a safe next workstream exists.

Trigger phrases to watch for in your own draft response: "standing by", "waiting", "what next", "let me know if", or any sentence offering the user obvious options instead of continuing.

When not to use

Project genuinely complete AND no deferred testing or exploration of value remains.
User asked for one targeted change.
High-risk migration, deletion, contract amendment requested.
Outside delegate-manager-to-subagents workflow.
Current milestone near closure and only final verification or handoff remains. Finish the milestone first, THEN propose follow-on workstreams. stay-busy must not be used to avoid finishing.

Finish before expanding

This gate runs before every stay-busy invocation, and before any tier bump or scope expansion described in the sections that follow:

Inspect every already-running or paused workstream in the current plan.
If a workstream needs only verification, documentation, or final handoff, queue THAT workstream first.
Do not launch new workstreams when existing workstreams can be closed.
Staying busy must not create abandoned partial work.

This is the "Finish the obvious" core philosophy from docs/REPO_STYLE.md applied to the stay-busy lifecycle. Away mode, Manager decision authority, Tier signals, and Workstream scale all apply ONLY after this gate is clean.

Away mode

After the finish-before-expanding gate passes, read references/operating_modes.md. Away mode widens the normal tier, favors expansive evidence-producing work, resolves reversible choices through documented assumptions, and requires finished artifacts rather than pending questions.

Manager decision authority

Read references/operating_modes.md before making unattended decisions. The manager chooses and documents every safe, reversible option; surprising results trigger more evidence. Choices that cross an ask-only boundary route to references/boundaries.md.

Default-to-safe-work rules

Apply the decision and situation rules in references/operating_modes.md. Execute given decisions, take safe defaults, fix failed checks, and switch to an unblocked workstream when one stalls.

Situation to action

Use the situation-routing table in references/operating_modes.md to select the immediate action for completed tasks, failed checks, running agents, non-blocking issues, and real boundaries.

Workstream scale

Read references/scaling_and_cleanup.md after the finish-before-expanding gate. Select the tier from plan length, active workstreams, recent diff size, and at-keyboard versus away mode.

Tier signals

The complete tier matrix lives in references/scaling_and_cleanup.md. Use its workstream range as the dispatch count; away mode applies the documented tier bump.

Side quest discipline

Follow the labeling and evidence rules in references/scaling_and_cleanup.md. A side quest remains project-related, carries a canonical task status, and stays distinct from production-ready work.

Stale-workstream cleanup

When open workstreams exceed the current tier, use the status table and closure actions in references/scaling_and_cleanup.md before generating more work.

Workstream taxonomy

Use references/ideas_checklist.md to choose project-relevant work and reject busywork. Then load the selected type's prompt and artifact requirements from references/workstream_templates.md.

Blocked-fallback contract

Every workstream includes an explicit blocked fallback before dispatch. Choose a starter from references/ideas_checklist.md and adapt it to the task's actual dependency.

Boundaries

Ask-only boundaries, allowed-without-asking actions, and the metric-gaming forbidden list live in references/boundaries.md.

Evidence artifact requirement

Every task handoff produces both:

a status label from DONE, DONE_WITH_CONCERNS, NEEDS_CONTEXT, or BLOCKED, and
an inspectable artifact path (file path, screenshot path, JSON path, report path, command-log path, or before/after metric record).

This is how the manager stays trustworthy across an unattended stretch: the user, on return, can audit any decision by reading the artifact. "I looked into it" handoffs leave nothing to audit and are redispatched per delegate-manager-to-subagents status handling.

Breadth before convergence

For uncertain problems, apply the breadth-before-convergence rule in references/scaling_and_cleanup.md: fan out comparable evidence, then converge.

Standard output template

Use the standard output template in references/workstream_templates.md. Fill every placeholder before dispatch and populate its boundary lists from references/boundaries.md.

What the skill must not do

Run the reject-before-dispatch checklist in references/ideas_checklist.md. It excludes fake progress, risky unapproved scope, test weakening, tiny task spam, and motion without evidence.

Handoff to manager

stay-busy emits a TaskList of workstream-shaped tasks plus the output-template message, then returns control to delegate-manager-to-subagents for dispatch. Skill is a generator, not an executor. Task text passes verbatim to subagents per the manager's task-text-discipline rule.

Workflow

Confirm active delegate-manager-to-subagents plan and idle state.
Run finish-before-expanding: list active workstreams; if any need verification, documentation, or final handoff, queue them first.
Pick workstream-scale tier from project signals.
Select workstream types from the taxonomy that fit current project state. Run references/ideas_checklist.md, then pull prompt templates from references/workstream_templates.md.
Attach a blocked fallback to each workstream.
Build TaskList: one task per workstream entry, with status-label and artifact-path requirements stated verbatim.
Emit the standard output template with Ask only for and Allowed without asking lists pulled from references/boundaries.md.
Return control to delegate-manager-to-subagents.