takeoff

Take Off

The session kickoff counterpart to /land. Where /land closes out work, /takeoff starts work by giving a crisp, prioritized picture of what to pick up.

Trigger

Any variation of:

• /takeoff, takeoff, take off, let's take off, time to take off, ready to take off
• what should I work on, what's next, kickoff, start a new session, show me the backlog

When in doubt and the user is at the start of work (not finishing), invoke this protocol.

What this skill produces

A short, scannable briefing with four sections:

1. Top Priority — the N highest-priority actionable tasks
2. Blocked / Dependent — tasks that exist but cannot be started
3. In Progress — tasks already underway (not to be double-claimed)
4. Recommendation — one sentence: "Start with X because …"

Keep it terse. The user wants to pick a task and go, not read a report.

Execution

Step 1: Verify backlog tooling is present

Check that the current repo has a backlog/ directory. If not, fall back to reading plan files in docs/plans/ and summarizing those instead (Step 2b).

test -d backlog && echo "backlog present" || echo "no backlog — will fall back to docs/plans/"

Step 2: Pull the backlog (preferred path)

Shell out to the backlog CLI only when both the CLI and backlog/ directory are present. Otherwise fall through to Step 2b:

if command -v backlog >/dev/null 2>&1 && [ -d backlog ]; then
  backlog task list --plain --sort priority
  backlog sequence list --plain
fi

Parse both outputs. Extract: id, title, priority, status, assignee, dependencies, blocked-by.

If the backlog CLI is absent but the backlog/ directory is present, read the task markdown files directly and parse frontmatter for the same fields.

Step 2b: Fallback — read docs/plans/

When no backlog/ directory exists (the default in ATV-starterkit today), scan docs/plans/ for plans with status: active in the YAML frontmatter:

for plan in docs/plans/*.md; do
  [ -f "$plan" ] || continue
  # Only consider plans whose frontmatter has `status: active`.
  # awk pulls the first YAML block; grep checks for the active marker.
  if awk '/^---$/{c++; next} c==1' "$plan" | grep -qE '^status:[[:space:]]*active$'; then
    title=$(awk '/^---$/{c++; next} c==1' "$plan" | grep -E '^title:' | sed 's/^title:[[:space:]]*//; s/^"//; s/"$//')
    echo "- $(basename "$plan") — ${title:-(untitled)}"
  fi
done

Skip plans with status: done, status: archived, or missing frontmatter. Mention explicitly in the output that this is a docs/plans/ fallback because the repo has no backlog/ directory. If the fallback also yields zero active plans, drop into the empty-list edge case (congratulate + suggest /ce-ideate or /ce-plan).

Step 3: Classify each task

For every task returned, bucket it:

Bucket	Criteria
Actionable	status = "To Do", no unresolved dependencies, not assigned to someone else
Blocked	status = "To Do" but has a blocked_by / unresolved dependency
In Progress	status = "In Progress" or "Doing"
Done	status = "Done" — skip, don't surface

If a task has a dependency, note which task blocks it by ID.

Step 4: Render as bulleted groups

Sort actionable tasks by priority (HIGH → MEDIUM → LOW), then by ID. By default show the top 5 in the top-priority group. If the user passed --top N, honor that. If they passed --mine, filter to their assignee.

Format: flat bullet lists grouped by category, with an emoji header on each secondary group. Tables wrap poorly in narrow terminals. A plain - ID — Title bullet reads cleanly at any width.

Use — (em-dash) as the separator between ID and title. For tasks with dependencies, append (blocked by X, Y) or (depends on X) at the end of the line.

Group headers use these emojis:

• 🛫 Top-priority actionable group (the main recommendation pool)
• 🔵 Epic subtasks, or clusters of related follow-ups
• 🟢 In Progress
• ⚪ LOW / Housekeeping
• 🔴 Blocked / Dependent (only when all blockers are hard blockers)

Emit the output directly as markdown in your final response — no code fences, no custom rendering scripts.

Shape:

## 🛫 Takeoff — <repo-name>

### Top Priority (actionable)

- AGENTSAPI-1 — Orchestrator admin-agents client + manifest types
- AGENTSAPI-2 — Admin Agents list page + row actions (depends on AGENTSAPI-1)
- NEBULA-42 — PR comment three-step enforcement hook

🔵 DOCREVIEW epic subtasks (children of DOCREVIEW-1)

- DOCREVIEW-1.1 — strip Recommendations strip from final chain message
- DOCREVIEW-1.2 — generalize Review Document button via ChainConfig

🟢 In Progress

- AGENTSAPI-7 — something currently being worked on (@sam)

⚪ LOW / Housekeeping

- NEBULA-35 — Enforce backlog.md usage via MCP server and hooks

### Recommendation
Start with **AGENTSAPI-1**. It's the next unblocked HIGH-priority item and clears the path for 2 more.

Formatting rules:

• One task per line. Do not wrap a task across multiple lines.
• Group headers use H3 (###) for top-priority only; secondary groups use a bold-emoji line (e.g., 🔵 DOCREVIEW epic subtasks), not an H-level heading.
• Omit groups that have zero tasks. If In Progress is empty, skip the section.
• Never emit a table. No pipes, no box-drawing characters.
• Do not truncate titles; rely on bullets to wrap cleanly at any width.

Step 5: Offer a next step

End with a single question: "Want me to open the plan for <ID> and start /ce-work on it?" — do not auto-start. Takeoff is for orientation, not execution.

Step 6: Final banner

After the recommendation question, emit a single final line:

✈️ TAKE OFF — NOW AT 30,000 FEET

This must be the last line of output — no content after it, no code fence, no trailing heading. It fires on every successful completion path, including the no-backlog fallback and the empty-task-list edge case. Do not emit the banner if the routine aborts before producing a briefing.

Formatting rules

• Bullets, not tables. Tables break at narrow widths; bullets flow cleanly.
• Group with emoji headers. 🛫 top-priority, 🔵 related clusters / epics, 🟢 in progress, ⚪ housekeeping, 🔴 hard-blocked.
• Never hide blockers. Annotate dependencies inline with (blocked by X) — don't silently drop the task.
• Show dependency IDs explicitly. (blocked by AGENTSAPI-1) is useful; (has dependencies) is not.
• Be honest about emptiness. If there are zero actionable tasks, say so and suggest creating one or picking up in-progress work.
• Always end with the takeoff banner. The final line of every successful invocation must be ✈️ TAKE OFF — NOW AT 30,000 FEET.

Why this shape

Takeoff's job is one concentrated briefing that answers "what am I about to do and why" in under 15 seconds of reading. Bullets + a one-line recommendation beat a paragraph because the user is scanning, not reading.

Dependencies matter more than priority on their own — a HIGH task that's blocked is worse than a MEDIUM task that's ready. The recommendation should factor in unblocking power, not just raw priority.

Arguments

• --top N — show N tasks in the top-priority group (default 5)
• --mine — filter to tasks assigned to the current user (resolve via git config user.email or git config user.name)
• --all — also include LOW priority actionable tasks
• --tag <tag> — filter by a backlog tag/label

If no arguments are given, use defaults.

Edge cases

• No backlog/ directory → fall back to docs/plans/ summaries (Step 2b); tell the user.
• backlog/ present but CLI missing → parse task markdown files directly.
• backlog CLI returns non-zero → report the error honestly, fall back to docs/plans/, still emit banner.
• Everything is blocked → surface the root blockers and ask whether to create a task to unblock them.
• Task list is empty → congratulate the user and suggest /ce-ideate or /ce-plan to generate new work.
• Tasks without priority set → treat as MEDIUM.