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name objectstack-pm-dispatch
description Run a project-manager dispatch loop over a GitHub backlog: triage and queue ready issues, claim each one, dispatch it to a parallel developer agent that returns a structured JSON report, review the results against GitHub, and drive accepted pull requests to landing — escalating to the maintainer only what genuinely needs a human decision. Ships the developer-agent operating template the loop injects into every dispatch (no custom agent types required) and the upstream-reporting procedure for platform defects an app project finds. Use when asked to "work through the backlog", "batch-dispatch issues", "派发 issue 给开发 agent", to stand up a multi-agent delivery loop in an ObjectStack app project, or to report a platform bug found while building an app. Do not use for authoring ObjectStack metadata (the domain skills cover that), for a single already-scoped change you can just make, or as a replacement for the project's own conventions file — that file always wins.
license Apache-2.0
compatibility No @objectstack/spec dependency — process skill. Needs a GitHub repository with issues enabled, and either the `gh` CLI or GitHub API tooling (MCP server) with issue/label/PR write access.
metadata
author version domain tags
objectstack-ai
1.0
process
pm, dispatch, backlog, triage, multi-agent, delivery, github, escalation, upstream

PM dispatch — a multi-agent delivery loop for any project

This skill turns one session into a PM agent: it never writes code itself. It selects work from a GitHub backlog and hands each issue to a developer agent that returns a structured report, then reviews and lands the result.

select → claim → dispatch → collect → review → report → next batch

The maintainer stays out of the loop except at two points: the round report printed after each batch, and the decision issues filed when something genuinely needs a human call.

Nothing in this skill is specific to one codebase. Everything project-specific — gates, release-note artifacts, branch naming, review requirements — is read from your project's own conventions file (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, …). When this skill and that file disagree, the project's file wins.

Quickstart

1. Install

npx skills add objectstack-ai/objectstack/skills --skill objectstack-pm-dispatch

(Installing the whole ObjectStack bundle with --all includes it.)

2. Configure — optional. With no config the loop runs against the current repository: it is the only shard and the backlog. Add .claude/pm-dispatch.json only when you have more than one repository, a separate backlog repository, or want different defaults.

3. Run

/pm-dispatch                 # drain the pm:queue backlog, 3 agents at a time
/pm-dispatch batch:5         # wider batch
/pm-dispatch #128 #131       # two named issues, nothing else
/pm-dispatch rounds:1        # one round, then stop and report

The first round creates the labels it needs (idempotent), sweeps the backlog, and prints a round report when the batch is done.

Configuration

The loop reads .claude/pm-dispatch.json from the repository the session starts in. The file is optional. Every key has a default that makes a single-repository project work with no configuration at all.

{
  "backlogRepo": "acme/hotcrm",
  "repos": ["acme/hotcrm", "acme/hotcrm-web"],
  "batch": 3,
  "mode": "subagent",
  "conventionsFile": "AGENTS.md",
  "routingLabelPrefix": "repo:"
}
Key Type Default Meaning
backlogRepo "owner/name" the current repository The one repository whose issues are the queue. All scheduling authority lives here.
repos string[] [backlogRepo] Every repository work may land in. Used for label setup and for validating routing labels.
batch number 3 Maximum developer agents in flight at once.
mode "subagent" | "cloud" "subagent" Dispatch backend — see Dispatch backends.
conventionsFile string first existing of AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CONTRIBUTING.md Repository-relative path to the file that defines gates, branch rules, release-note artifacts and review policy. Injected by path into every dispatch.
routingLabelPrefix string "repo:" Prefix of the labels that route an issue to a non-default repository, e.g. repo:hotcrm-web. Inert when repos has one entry.

Unknown keys are an error, not a hint. If the file contains a key not in this table, stop and say so — do not guess what was meant and do not silently ignore it. A config that quietly drops half of what it declares is exactly the failure this loop is built to prevent everywhere else.

Zero-config semantics. With no file: the current repository is the backlog and the only target, batch is 3, dispatch is in-session, routing labels are never applied, and the conventions file is auto-detected (if none of the three exists, say so in the first round report — the loop still runs, but every dispatch will be missing the project's gates).

Arguments

/pm-dispatch [args] — free-form, all optional. Arguments override the config file for that run only.

arg meaning default
label:<name> backlog filter label; label:all = every open unassigned issue pm:queue
repo:<owner/name> which repository's backlog to scan backlogRepo
batch:<n> max developer agents in flight at once batch
rounds:<n> stop after N rounds until the queue is empty
mode:subagent | mode:cloud dispatch backend mode
#12 #34 … explicit issue list — overrides the label query entirely —

State model — all state lives in GitHub, none locally

The loop must be resumable from a fresh session with zero local state. Read and write state only through these signals:

signal on the issue meaning
open + queue label + unassigned ready to dispatch
assignee set claimed / in flight — if the assignee is not you, it belongs to another agent or a human; never touch it
label pm:dispatched dispatched by this loop (the claim comment records the round)
label needs-user-decision waiting on the maintainer — never dispatch, never auto-answer
open PR referencing the issue implemented, in review
merged PR with Fixes #n done (GitHub closes the issue)

One-time label setup (idempotent — run at the start of the first round for every entry in repos):

for R in $REPOS; do
  gh label create pm:queue            -R "$R" -c 0e8a16 -d "Ready for the PM dispatch loop" || true
  gh label create pm:dispatched       -R "$R" -c 1d76db -d "Dispatched to a developer agent by /pm-dispatch" || true
  gh label create needs-user-decision -R "$R" -c d93f0b -d "Blocked on a maintainer decision — do not dispatch" || true
done
# Routing labels exist only on the backlog repository, one per non-default target:
gh label create "repo:hotcrm-web" -R "$BACKLOG_REPO" -c fbca04 -d "Lands in hotcrm-web" || true

Use GitHub API/MCP tools instead of gh when the CLI is unavailable — the protocol is identical.

One board, no second tracker. These labels are the state machine. A GitHub Project pulling issues and PRs from every entry in repos gives the maintainer a single view. The PM keeps no tracking state outside GitHub — that invariant is what makes the loop resumable and the board honest.

The round loop

0. Backlog sweep — classification is a standing duty, not a request

The maintainer does not pre-sort the backlog. On every round (and every idle check-in), sweep issues carrying no pm:* / needs-user-decision label and classify each:

  • Auto-queue (pm:queue) — a concrete defect with a named location or repro; a scoped tooling or gate fix; a restore-invariant finding; a test-only pin. There is nothing to ask: label it and it becomes dispatchable.
  • Maintainer confirm (needs-user-decision) — design cards, feature or contract-shape proposals, multi-week programs needing appetite and sequencing, anything touching stored-data migration shape or removing a shipped capability. The label alone is the inbox entry; the deep two-axis analysis is written when the card is actually taken up.
  • Repair first — a body truncated by GitHub's sanitizer cannot be dispatched. Comment the repair instruction and move on.

1. Fetch candidates

List open issues matching the filter, excluding anything assigned or labeled needs-user-decision. Open sub-issues of a matching parent are candidates too — they inherit the parent's queue membership and need no label of their own.

Read each candidate's full body and its comments. A comment often records that half the work already shipped; dispatching without reading it burns a whole agent run.

Stale-premise check before every dispatch. An issue describes the repository as of its filing date, and an active default branch moves fast. Before dispatching, check the named files and subsystem against recent history:

git log --oneline -20 origin/main -- <paths named in the issue>
gh pr list --state merged --search "<the issue's keywords>" --limit 10

A dispatch that starts with "is this still true?" costs minutes. One that does not costs an agent run — and sometimes lands a second, conflicting fix for something already solved.

2. Triage — routing is the PM's job, never the maintainer's

The maintainer's only input is the issue plus pm:queue (or naming the task in chat). They are not expected to know which repository a change lands in — that answer usually is the analysis.

  • Determine where the change lands by reading the issue against the actual code of every repository in repos. Apply {routingLabelPrefix}<name> yourself; no routing label means the default (backlog) repository. A routing label a human already set is respected as-is.

  • Cross-repository work is never one dispatch. Split it: a parent issue plus one sub-issue per repository, and the sub-issue that fixes the contract (schema, API shape, shared types) goes first. Downstream sub-issues carry a body line Blocked-by: <owner/repo>#<n>. Never dispatch an issue whose Blocked-by references are not yet closed or merged — verify against GitHub at selection time, not from memory.

  • A parent issue that already has sub-issues needs the queue label on the parent alone. Expand it at triage: triage and route each sub-issue, preserve any dependency ordering the maintainer expressed, and where none is expressed infer the contract-first order and write the Blocked-by: lines yourself. The parent is a coordination node — never dispatched to a developer; it stays open as the progress view and is closed with a summary comment when the last sub-issue closes.

  • Leave a one-comment audit trail on the issue so the maintainer can veto cheaply: "Triage: lands in hotcrm-web; reason: …".

  • Routing is a technical judgment — never escalate "which repository?" If after reading the code you genuinely cannot tell, the issue is underspecified: escalate the underlying product question (step 8), not the routing.

  • Dedup across repositories before anything can be dispatched. Follow every cross-repository reference on the issue's body and timeline, and keyword-search open issues and PRs in the other repositories (module names, error strings):

    • shadow claimed / PR in flight → do not dispatch; add Blocked-by: <repo>#<n> plus a comment, revisit for the remaining work when it lands;
    • shadow open, unclaimed → converge first: cross-link, make one a sub-issue of the other (or close one as duplicate), so one piece of work has exactly one dispatch entry — then queue normally;
    • shadow already done → the backlog issue may be stale: verify what remains, recommend closing if nothing does;
    • nothing found → dispatch normally.

    The backlog repository is the only scheduling authority — two queues must never dispatch the same work.

3. Select the batch

Pick up to batch issues that are mutually independent: no two issues in one batch may plausibly touch the same package, registry or barrel file, or schema. Two developer agents editing the same shared file produce a merge race that costs more than serializing. When in doubt, serialize — put the second issue in the next round.

Prefer small, well-specified issues. An issue whose acceptance criteria you cannot state in one sentence is a candidate for escalation (step 8), not dispatch. Batch independence is cross-repository too: two issues linked by Blocked-by or sharing a parent never ride in the same batch.

4. Claim

Claiming before any code is written is what keeps two agents off the same issue.

Across GitHub accounts the assignee already says who. "Assignee is not you → taken, never touch" is the entire cross-account protocol.

Within one account (several sessions sharing an identity) the assignee says only "some agent claimed this" — the claim comment carries the identity. For each selected issue, before dispatching, execute in order:

  1. Assign the issue to yourself and add pm:dispatched. Skip — and drop from the batch — any issue that acquired an assignee since step 1.

  2. Claim comment, fixed shape. The branch name is the key: every later artifact (worktree, push, PR) hangs off it.

    Claim: PM loop round N Branch: claude/issue-<n>-<slug> Worktree: <repo>-issue-<n>

  3. Race check. Assignment is idempotent, so two agents can both "succeed". Re-read the comments; if an earlier claim comment with a different branch name exists, you lost — touch nothing of theirs, reply that you are yielding, and pick another issue. First comment wins.

Developer agents push their branch early — a remote branch is the hardest evidence of work in flight, and it closes the gap between "claimed" and "a PR exists".

Stale-claim reclaim. A claim older than ~24 h whose promised branch does not exist on the remote and has no PR is presumed dead: comment asking, and after another window of silence remove the assignee (noting why) and return the issue to the queue. Never reclaim a claim that has a live branch with commits.

5. Dispatch

One agent per issue, run in parallel in the background, each with the developer-agent operating template prepended to its prompt. If your harness has custom agent types, use one; if it does not, a general-purpose agent with the template is equivalent — the template is the contract, not the agent type.

Fill every placeholder and paste the full issue body, never a summary:

Your task is issue {backlog_repo}#{n}. The code lands in {target_repo}
(from the issue's {routingLabelPrefix} routing label; the backlog repo when
unlabeled).

ISSUE TITLE: {title}
ISSUE BODY:
{body}

{on rework rounds only:}
PREVIOUS ATTEMPT REVIEW — fix all of these before returning:
{feedback}

--- OPERATING PROCEDURE (binding) ---
{the developer-agent operating template, verbatim}
--- END OPERATING PROCEDURE ---

Non-negotiables for this dispatch:
- Work in {target_repo}: branch claude/issue-{n}-{slug} off origin/{default_branch},
  in a DEDICATED worktree of that repository.
- {conventions_file} in that repository is binding — read it before your first edit.
- The issue is already claimed; do not touch its assignee.
- Deliver a DRAFT PR in {target_repo} whose body starts with
  "Fixes {backlog_repo}#{n}". Never merge anything.
- If the issue underspecifies a decision that changes a public contract
  (schema, API shape, naming, metadata semantics), STOP and return
  status "needs_decision" with your open questions — do not guess.
Return ONLY the JSON report defined in the operating procedure.

Dispatch backends

mode:subagent (default). Sub-agents inside the PM's own session. Reports come back directly as each agent's final message — a lossless channel. Prefer this mode; it is simpler and nothing can be lost between agent and reviewer.

mode:cloud. Each issue becomes an independent session with its own container and fresh clone, decoupled from the PM session's lifetime. Use it when a task needs resources or a lifetime beyond one container, or when the maintainer asks for it. Requires session-spawning tooling in your harness; if that is absent, say so and fall back to mode:subagent.

An independent session cannot return a message to the PM, so the dispatch prompt must be fully standalone (it starts with zero conversation context) and must instruct the agent to post the JSON report as a comment on the issue, prefixed with a machine-findable marker such as <!-- dev-report -->, in addition to opening the draft PR.

6. Collect

Subagent mode: wait for the agents to return. Do not poll, and never fabricate a pending agent's result. An agent that dies or returns malformed output counts as status: "blocked" with its raw output attached.

Cloud mode: there is no direct return channel — collect through GitHub. Arm a check-in (~15 min); on each wake, sweep the dispatched issues for report comments and linked PRs, then re-arm silently until every dispatch of the round has reported, or a dispatch has been silent for over ~2 h (count it as blocked and move on).

Never treat the absence of a report as success.

7. Review each report

You are the reviewer of record. For each report, verify against GitHub — not against the report's own claims:

  • The PR exists, is a draft, targets the default branch, and its body references Fixes #{n}.
  • Fetch the PR's changed files. Scope check: nothing plainly unrelated to the issue, and every artifact the project's conventions file requires (release note / changeset entry, generated-file regeneration, migration note) is present.
  • Test evidence in the report shows the actual commands and passing output, not a bare "tests pass".
  • The diff plausibly satisfies the issue's acceptance criteria.

Verdict per issue:

  • ACCEPT — comment on the issue linking the PR and summarizing what shipped. Then drive it to landing per the project's merge policy: where a merge queue exists, mark the PR ready and add it to the queue once every check is green (the queue rebuilds against the current default branch, which is the sanctioned path); where none exists, merge serially only after remote CI is fully green, and only if the project allows the PM to merge at all. This applies to developer-agent PRs dispatched by this loop only — the PM's own tooling PRs stay with the maintainer.
  • REWORK — concrete, itemized feedback; re-dispatch the same issue with the feedback block filled (same claim, new agent). Maximum 2 rework rounds per issue; a third failure escalates instead.
  • ESCALATE — see step 8.

8. Escalate uncertainties to the maintainer

Apply the escalation bar first — most things that feel like decisions are not. Escalate ONLY when at least one holds:

  • the options genuinely diverge on product semantics or public contract shape, and neither the issue, the conventions file, the project's recorded decisions (ADRs), nor existing code norms determines the answer;
  • the fix requires a destructive or hard-to-reverse action — stored-data migration shape, deleting a shipped capability, force operations.

Everything else is the PM's call: decide, dispatch, and give the maintainer a veto window instead of a permission gate — state what you decided and why in the issue comment and the round report; they can stop it, but you do not wait for them.

Named non-escalation classes — act immediately:

  • Restore-invariant fixes. When the project already states the invariant (one contract version across a family, declared = enforced, a gate must actually run what it claims to check), a finding that the invariant is broken carries its own decision. Asking "may I restore the invariant?" is the anti-pattern.
  • Sequencing and dependency ordering between technical tasks.
  • Verification strategy — what regression pass a risky-but-decided change needs. That is scoping the work, not deciding it.
  • A developer agent's needs_decision that, on review, falls into the classes above: answer it yourself with the decision and rationale; do not relay it upward.

When something does pass the bar:

  1. The decision lives ON the issue it belongs to — never a new issue. Post the analysis as a comment there, add needs-user-decision, drop the issue from the active queue. The label is the maintainer's inbox (filter label:needs-user-decision); when they answer, the label comes off and the issue re-enters the queue. File a separate issue (titled [Decision] <one line saying what must be decided>, same label) ONLY when the decision has no natural anchor — it spans several issues, or arose with no issue of its own.
  2. Write the analysis with: background, the precise question, the options, your recommendation, and the related issues / PRs / branches — and analyze every option on the two fixed axes below.
  3. If the session is interactive, additionally ask the maintainer directly; the labeled issue remains the durable record either way. Never answer a product or architecture question on the maintainer's behalf.

The two-axis decision frame (binding)

Every option in an escalation is analyzed on both axes. This framing is the core of the escalation, not decoration.

Axis ① — long-term architectural soundness for this project. Which option matches where the project is going and a sustainable architecture — no workarounds, contract-first — rather than which is cheapest today. Name the long-term cost of any patch-style option explicitly. "We can special-case it here" is a valid option only when its future removal cost is stated.

Axis ② — making AI-authored code structurally hard to get wrong, and especially AI-authored ObjectStack metadata. Prefer the option that prevents the mistake at authoring time — a strict schema, publish-time validation that rejects loudly, declared = enforced — over consumer-side tolerance (?? fallbacks, alias acceptance, silent coercion). Lenient consumers are exactly where AI-generated errors hide and multiply: one tolerant reader turns a whole generation of wrong metadata into something that "works" until it does not. Never let an agent declare a capability the runtime does not honour.

Your recommendation must be justified on both axes. If they conflict, present the trade-off honestly and let the maintainer decide.

9. Round report, then next round

Print a round report to the maintainer: a table of issue → verdict → PR link → notes, plus anything escalated and anything you decided under the veto window. Then start the next round at step 1. Rework re-dispatches count against the next round's batch budget.

Stop conditions

Stop the loop and report when any of these hits:

  • the queue is empty, or rounds is exhausted;
  • half or more of a round's dispatches failed or escalated — that is a systemic problem (bad queue hygiene, a broken default branch, wrong tooling), and burning the rest of the backlog against it wastes every remaining dispatch;
  • the maintainer interrupts.

The developer-agent operating template

Paste this verbatim into every dispatch prompt. It is written to stand alone: an agent with no prior context and no custom agent type can follow it. Placeholders in {…} are filled by the PM.

You are a developer agent. You were dispatched with exactly ONE GitHub issue.
Your entire deliverable is that issue implemented, pushed as a draft PR, plus
the JSON report below as your FINAL MESSAGE — it is parsed mechanically, so
return the JSON and nothing else.

{conventions_file} in the target repository is binding; read it before your
first edit. It overrides this template wherever they disagree. The rules that
most often get missed:

1. Worktree-first. Before any edit:
     git worktree add ../<repo>-issue-<n> -b claude/issue-<n>-<slug> origin/{default_branch}
   then cd there and install dependencies. Never edit a shared checkout —
   other agents switch its HEAD under you. One worktree PER REPOSITORY if the
   change spans siblings.
2. The issue is already claimed. Do not change assignees. If you discover it
   duplicates or conflicts with someone else's in-flight work, stop and report
   "blocked".
3. Scope = the issue. Nothing else. Unrelated bugs you trip over are filed as
   NEW, UNASSIGNED issues and listed in out_of_scope_findings — never fixed in
   this PR.
4. Never force-push, never push the default branch, never merge anything.
   Never edit files the conventions file marks as owned by a release process.
5. Contract-first. If the fix tempts you to add a lenient fallback in a
   consumer (an alias `??`, a tolerant parse, a silent coercion), the bug is at
   the producer or in the schema — fix it there, or return "needs_decision".

Resource discipline — parallel agents share ONE container; unbounded build and
test runs exhaust it. Binding:

1. Serialize the heavy phase. Wrap every build and test run in a shared
   container-wide lock so editing parallelizes but memory peaks never stack:
     flock -w 7200 /tmp/heavy-verify.lock -c '<build/test command>'
   (one lock file per container; waiting on it is normal, not a hang).
2. Cap the heap: prefix heavy commands with
   NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=4096 (raise only with a reason).
3. Scope, don't sweep. Build and test the AFFECTED packages, not the whole
   repository, unless the task requires a full pass. Cap test parallelism
   (e.g. vitest --maxWorkers=2).
4. Clean up: after the PR is up, remove your worktree
   (git worktree remove <path> --force). Leftover dependency trees exhaust the
   container's disk, which fails as confusingly as running out of memory.
5. NEVER kill a process by name. A name-matched kill (pkill -f <tool>) can take
   down a parallel agent's run. Record the PID of what you start and operate on
   that PID only (kill $PID; liveness via kill -0 $PID). A pgrep pattern can
   match your own watcher and never terminate.

Definition of done, in order:
- Implementation matches the issue's acceptance criteria.
- Tests: new or updated tests covering the change; run the affected packages'
  test and typecheck commands and capture REAL output for the report.
- Whatever release-note artifact the conventions file requires for a
  user-visible change (e.g. a changeset entry).
- Pushed: git push -u origin claude/issue-<n>-<slug> (retry on network failure
  with backoff).
- A DRAFT PR to the default branch, body starting "Fixes {backlog_repo}#<n>",
  written in the language the repository's PRs use.
- Tear down anything you started (dev servers, temporary processes) by PID.

When to STOP instead of coding. If the issue underspecifies a decision that
shapes a public contract — a schema, API shape, naming, metadata semantics —
or two readings of the issue lead to different architectures: make no guess,
write no speculative code. Return status "needs_decision" with each question,
the options, their costs, and your recommendation in open_questions. A wrong
guess shipped is far more expensive than a round-trip to the maintainer.
Analyze every option on two fixed axes:
- Long-term architectural soundness for THIS project — which option matches a
  sustainable architecture (no workarounds, contract-first), not which is
  cheapest today. Name the long-term cost of any patch-style option.
- Making AI-authored code — especially AI-authored metadata — structurally hard
  to get wrong: prefer what prevents mistakes at authoring time (strict schema,
  publish-time validation that rejects loudly, declared = enforced) over
  consumer-side tolerance. Lenient consumers are where AI-generated errors hide
  and multiply.
Justify your recommendation on both axes; if they conflict, present the
trade-off and let the maintainer decide.

Return "blocked" (with evidence) when the default branch is broken under you, a
dependency issue is unmerged, or CI infrastructure fails — after retrying
enough to be sure it is not your change.

Final message — exactly this JSON, no prose around it:

{
  "issue": <n>,
  "status": "done | rework | blocked | needs_decision",
  "branch": "claude/issue-<n>-<slug>",
  "pr": "<url or null>",
  "summary": "what was implemented, 2-4 sentences",
  "tests": "commands run + pass/fail evidence (real output excerpts)",
  "open_questions": [
    { "question": "…", "options": ["A …", "B …"], "recommendation": "A, because …" }
  ],
  "out_of_scope_findings": ["filed as #<n>: one-line description"]
}

Use "rework" for a partial result you know is incomplete (say why in summary).

Practical trap when filing issues or PRs through the GitHub API: the body
sanitizer strips "<" followed by a letter as an HTML tag AT REST, which
destroys TypeScript generics. Write a space after each "<" and read the stored
body back to verify when a snippet is load-bearing.

Report contract (what a developer agent returns)

{
  "issue": 123,
  "status": "done | rework | blocked | needs_decision",
  "branch": "claude/issue-123-short-slug",
  "pr": "https://github.com/acme/hotcrm/pull/456 | null",
  "summary": "what was implemented, 2-4 sentences",
  "tests": "commands run + pass/fail evidence",
  "open_questions": [
    { "question": "…", "options": ["A …", "B …"], "recommendation": "A, because …" }
  ],
  "out_of_scope_findings": ["filed as #457: …"]
}

open_questions must be non-empty when status is needs_decision, and each entry becomes input to the escalation analysis. out_of_scope_findings should already be filed as unassigned issues by the developer agent — the PM only verifies they exist.

Upstream reporting — platform defects found while building an app

An app project (built on ObjectStack, or on any platform it does not own) regularly trips over defects that are not the app's to fix. The temptation is to make the app tolerate it and move on. Do not. A workaround in the app hides the defect from the people who can fix it, ships a second source of truth to every future author, and outlives the upstream fix by years — and when the app's metadata is AI-authored, the tolerant path is copied into everything generated next.

The upstream repository is derived, not configured. Read it from the failing dependency itself (its package.json repository field, or the registry page). For @objectstack/* packages that is objectstack-ai/objectstack.

1. Stale-premise check first

Before writing anything, establish that the defect still exists upstream:

  • reproduce against the current upstream default branch or the newest published version, not the version the app happens to pin;
  • search the upstream repository's open and closed issues and merged PRs for the symptom, the error string, and the module name;
  • read the upstream changelog between your pinned version and the latest.

If it is already fixed, the app-side task is an upgrade, not a report. Say so and stop.

2. Write a report that can be acted on without your app

  • Minimal repro — the smallest metadata or code that shows the defect, standalone, with no dependency on the app's own packages. If it cannot be reduced, say exactly what part of the app is load-bearing and why.
  • Pinned versions — the exact versions of every upstream package involved (pnpm list @objectstack/…), plus runtime and OS if relevant. "Latest" is not a version.
  • Expected vs actual, and the contract you are citing: the schema line, documented behaviour, or ADR the upstream is violating. A report that names the contract gets triaged as a defect; one that does not gets triaged as a question.
  • What you did NOT do: state that the app has no workaround, so the upstream can see the real blast radius.

3. File it as a guest, not as a scheduler

  • Open the issue in the upstream repository, with a backlink line Part of <app-owner>/<app-repo>#<n> so both sides can navigate.
  • Never apply the upstream's queue labels (pm:queue, pm:dispatched, …), never assign it, never add it to their board. Their PM triages their backlog; labeling it yourself injects work into a queue whose in-flight batch you cannot see — the same collision the single-scheduling-authority ban exists for.
  • Do not open a fix PR upstream unless your project has the appetite and the upstream's conventions invite it. If it does, that is an ordinary dispatch against the upstream repository, governed by their conventions file.

4. Park the app-side task honestly

The app-side issue does not silently continue. Pick one and record it:

  • Blocked-by: <upstream-owner>/<upstream-repo>#<n> in the body — the PM's batch selection skips it until that issue closes; or
  • pin the current upstream version with the unblock condition written down: "pinned at 17.2.0; unpin when <upstream>#<n> ships in >= 17.3". A pin with no recorded unblock condition is a workaround with better manners.

Either way the app-side issue stays open and visible. "We worked around it" is never a resolution — closing it is what makes the defect permanent.

Multiple PMs — shard by repository, never share a queue

The claim protocol makes concurrent PMs safe, not useful: batch independence is only checked within one PM's view, so two PMs on the same queue can claim different issues that collide on shared files. Scale in this order:

  1. One PM, bigger batch (batch:5), heavy tasks via mode:cloud — adds compute without adding schedulers.
  2. When one PM genuinely cannot keep up, a second session takes a whole repository as its shard (/pm-dispatch repo:<owner>/<other-repo>) — file universes are disjoint by construction. A sharded PM states its shard in every claim comment and never claims outside it.
  3. Multiple PMs on the same queue: prohibited. All cost, no throughput.

Shard ownership is registered, never assumed. A registry issue in the backlog repository records which session owns which shard. A PM taking over a shard comments there as its FIRST action, and again when handing off. An unowned shard may be caretaken by the backlog PM, but the moment a shard is registered to another session the caretaker stops dispatching into it — in-flight claimed tasks finish under whoever claimed them, and everything else belongs to the new owner. State the mode in claim comments so the registry and the claims never disagree silently.

Work crosses shard lines; PMs never do.

  • Transfer via the target queue: file the piece as an issue in the target repository with the queue label and a source line Part of <owner/repo>#<n>. The target shard's PM picks it up through its own sweep — the queue label IS the inter-PM channel.
  • Dependencies via Blocked-by: on the waiting side.
  • Follow-up chores belong to the consuming shard — when an upstream change lands, the dependent repository's adaptation issue is filed by the PM that owns that repository; it knows its own surfaces.
  • Shared contract surfaces have one owner. Anything touching the shared schema or contract package transfers to the backlog PM regardless of who needs it — only that PM sees that repository's in-flight batch and its generated-artifact collisions.
  • Cross-repository parent/sub-issue chains stay coordinated by the backlog PM; sharded PMs coordinate only chains fully inside their shard.

Linkage chores are issues, not memory. When an accepted PR's artifacts must flow into another repository (a regenerated client, a version bump, a refreshed build), file that follow-up in the consuming repository's backlog immediately, blocked by the PR until it merges. Nobody remembers.

Resource discipline (PM side)

Memory peaks come from build and test, not editing, so the fix is not less parallelism but serialized heavy phases — which the developer-agent template enforces with a container-wide verification lock, a heap cap, scoped builds and worktree cleanup.

PM side: treat the configured batch as assuming normal-sized tasks. For build-heavy ones (dependency-family upgrades, full regression passes) drop to batch:2, or dispatch that issue via mode:cloud so it gets its own container. If an agent dies with an out-of-memory signature, re-dispatch it alone rather than into a full batch.

Guardrails (binding)

  • The PM writes no files. Merging is allowed only for reviewed, fully-green developer-agent PRs, through the project's sanctioned path — never its own PRs, never a red or unreviewed one.
  • Never force-push, never push the default branch, never reassign an issue claimed by someone else, never dispatch a needs-user-decision issue.
  • Every developer agent works in its own worktree per repository.
  • Parallelism is capped by batch, and the agents in one batch must be file-disjoint by construction.
  • The backlog repository is the single scheduling authority. Never dispatch into a repository whose in-flight batch you cannot see.
  • When any rule here conflicts with the project's conventions file, that file wins.

Adapting this loop to your project

This skill deliberately does not encode any project's gates. Put these in your conventions file (AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md / …) and the loop will carry them into every dispatch:

What the loop needs to know Where it comes from
Branch naming, default branch, PR language conventions file
Required release-note artifact (changeset, CHANGELOG entry, none) conventions file
Files owned by a release process that a code PR must never touch conventions file
Test / typecheck / lint commands per package conventions file
Merge policy (merge queue, serial merge, maintainer-only) conventions file
Which repositories exist and which is the backlog .claude/pm-dispatch.json
Recorded architecture decisions the escalation bar defers to the project's ADR directory

If a dispatch fails because a project rule was invisible to the developer agent, the fix belongs in the conventions file — not in a longer dispatch prompt.