work-status

Work Status

Show active work sessions and advance their post-implementation lifecycle.

Scope: /work-status owns the lifecycle field in state.json — use it for status transitions (in-review, merged, completed, etc.). For free-form notes, scope changes, or mid-session findings that should be preserved against a session, use /update-context instead. Both skills write to the same state.json but own different fields.

Usage

/work-status                        # List all active sessions (read-only)
/work-status {identifier}           # Detailed view of one session (read-only)
/work-status --update               # Advance lifecycle on the current session
/work-status --update {identifier}  # Advance lifecycle on a specific session
/work-status --sync                 # Sweep all non-completed sessions, update interactively

Lifecycle States

Lifecycle is a post-implementation overlay. It tracks where a ticket sits once the planning/implementation phases are done and real-world review/QA/merge kicks in. Stored as the top-level lifecycle field in state.json, independent from the phases.* tracking that skills write automatically.

State	Meaning
ready_to_implement	Requirements complete, no implementation started
in_progress	Code being written; PR may or may not exist
qa_ready	PR open, CI green, code review approved — waiting on QA
qa	QA actively testing
done	PR merged and QA signed off

Sessions without a lifecycle field are pre-lifecycle (planning stages) and are listed under their phase label.

Configuration

if [ -f "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/resolve-config.sh" ]; then
  source "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/resolve-config.sh"
elif [ -f "$HOME/.claude/shared/resolve-config.sh" ]; then
  source "$HOME/.claude/shared/resolve-config.sh"
else
  echo "ERROR: resolve-config.sh not found. Install via marketplace or run ./install.sh" >&2
  exit 1
fi
WORK_DIR=$(resolve_artifact work work)
MANIFEST="${WORK_DIR}/manifest.json"

---

Mode Routing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

• --sync anywhere → Sync mode (Section 3)
• --update anywhere → Update mode (Section 2); remaining non-flag token is {identifier} if provided
• First non-flag token matches a directory under $WORK_DIR/ → Detail mode (Section 1b)
• No arguments → List mode (Section 1a)

---

1. List / Detail Mode (read-only)

1a. List all active sessions (/work-status)

if [[ ! -f "$MANIFEST" ]]; then
  for dir in "${WORK_DIR}"/*/; do
    [[ -f "${dir}state.json" ]] && echo "${dir}state.json"
  done
fi

Read the manifest and display all sessions grouped by type. Omit entries where status == "completed" or lifecycle == "done".

Output shape:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Active Work Sessions
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔵 Brainstorm
  user-export       User Data Export                   deep_dive     2h ago
  sso-integration   SSO with Azure AD                  Promoted → PROJ-456

🟡 Requirements
  PROJ-123          Payment Refund Flow                deep_dive     3h ago
  PROJ-456          SSO Integration        (from sso-integration)    1h ago

🟢 Lifecycle
  PROJ-789          Checkout Redesign                  in_progress   2h ago
  PROJ-790          Shipping Rules                     qa_ready      1d ago

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Advance: /work-status --update {identifier}
Sweep:   /work-status --sync
Resume:  /resume-work {identifier}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Formatting rules:

• Sessions with a lifecycle field appear under the Lifecycle group instead of their original type
• Brainstorm with status == "promoted": show Promoted → {promoted_to}
• Requirements with brainstorm.promoted_from: show (from {promoted_from})
• Completed / done items: excluded

If no active sessions:

No active work sessions.

Start one:
  /brainstorm           — explore approaches for a feature
  /create-requirements  — deep requirements for a ticket
  /epic                 — break down a large initiative

1b. Show single session (/work-status {identifier})

Read $WORK_DIR/{identifier}/state.json. If a lifecycle field is present, show it prominently; otherwise show the phase checklist.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PROJ-123 — Payment Refund Flow
Type: Requirements | Lifecycle: in_progress
Branch: feature/PROJ-123
PR: #482 (open, checks passing, 1 approval)
Last updated: 3 hours ago
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  ✓ Stage 1  Setup
  ✓ Stage 2  Discovery
  ✓ Stage 3  Deep dive
  ✓ Stage 4  Synthesis
  → Implementation  (chunk 3/5)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Advance: /work-status --update PROJ-123
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

---

2. Update Mode (--update)

Step 2.1: Resolve identifier

If {identifier} was passed explicitly on the command line, use it and skip to 2.2.

Otherwise, derive from context — collect all candidates, present findings, confirm with user:

1. Current git branch — git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD, then find sessions whose state.json has a branch field matching (exact or the feature/{identifier} convention).
2. Branch substring match — identifier substring within the branch name (e.g. feat/PROJ-123-refund → PROJ-123).
3. Most recently updated non-completed session — jq sort by updated_at desc on $MANIFEST.

Present findings with AskUserQuestion:

Detected session for update: PROJ-123 (Payment Refund Flow)
  Current branch: feature/PROJ-123
  Last updated: 3 hours ago
  Current lifecycle: in_progress

Use this session?
  [Yes, use PROJ-123]
  [No, pick different session]

If the user picks "No" or no candidate was found, list all non-completed sessions via AskUserQuestion and have them pick. If still nothing matches, ask them to type the identifier.

Never auto-select without confirmation — mutations require explicit user approval.

Once {identifier} is confirmed, set:

STATE_FILE="$WORK_DIR/{identifier}/state.json"
MANIFEST="$WORK_DIR/manifest.json"

if [[ ! -f "$STATE_FILE" ]]; then
  echo "Error: No state found for '{identifier}'. Expected: $STATE_FILE"
  exit 1
fi

Step 2.2: Check PR status (if a PR exists)

Read phases.pr.pr_number from state.json. If present:

PR_NUM=$(jq -r '.phases.pr.pr_number // empty' "$STATE_FILE")
if [[ -n "$PR_NUM" ]]; then
  PR_JSON=$(gh pr view "$PR_NUM" --json state,mergedAt,reviewDecision,statusCheckRollup,isDraft 2>/dev/null)
fi

Parse:

• state: OPEN / MERGED / CLOSED
• reviewDecision: APPROVED / CHANGES_REQUESTED / REVIEW_REQUIRED / null
• statusCheckRollup[].conclusion: aggregate to passing / failing / pending
• isDraft: boolean

Derived suggestion:

PR state	Suggest
MERGED	ask: qa or done (depending on whether QA has run)
OPEN, draft	in_progress
OPEN, checks failing	in_progress
OPEN, approved, checks green	qa_ready
OPEN, changes_requested	in_progress
CLOSED (not merged)	ask — likely abandoned
no PR	ready_to_implement or in_progress — ask

If gh is unavailable or not authenticated, skip this step and go straight to Step 2.3 with no suggestion.

Step 2.3: Confirm lifecycle transition

Present current + suggested state, let user pick:

PROJ-123 — Payment Refund Flow
Current lifecycle: in_progress
PR #482: open, checks passing, 1 approval

Suggested: qa_ready

Set lifecycle to?
  [qa_ready]      (suggested)
  [ready_to_implement]
  [in_progress]
  [qa]
  [done]
  [skip — don't change]

Use AskUserQuestion with the six options. If user picks "skip", exit without writing.

Step 2.4: Write update

TIMESTAMP=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)
NEW_STATE="{chosen_state}"

TMP_STATE=$(mktemp)
jq --arg s "$NEW_STATE" --arg ts "$TIMESTAMP" \
  '.lifecycle = $s
   | .lifecycle_updated_at = $ts
   | .updated_at = $ts
   | if $s == "done" then .status = "completed" else . end
   | .updates = ((.updates // []) + [{"timestamp": $ts, "note": ("lifecycle → " + $s)}])' \
  "$STATE_FILE" > "$TMP_STATE" && mv "$TMP_STATE" "$STATE_FILE"

if [[ -f "$MANIFEST" ]]; then
  TMP_MF=$(mktemp)
  jq --arg id "{identifier}" --arg s "$NEW_STATE" --arg ts "$TIMESTAMP" \
    '(.items[] | select(.identifier == $id)) |= (.lifecycle = $s | .updated_at = $ts | if $s == "done" then .status = "completed" else . end)' \
    "$MANIFEST" > "$TMP_MF" && mv "$TMP_MF" "$MANIFEST"
fi

Step 2.5: Confirm

✓ PROJ-123 → qa_ready
  PR #482 open, 1 approval, checks passing
  Recorded 2026-04-22T14:22:00Z

---

3. Sync Mode (--sync)

Sweep all non-completed sessions and run the update flow per session.

Step 3.1: Collect candidates

jq -r '.items[]
  | select((.status // "") != "completed" and (.lifecycle // "") != "done")
  | .identifier' "$MANIFEST"

If the manifest is missing, fall back to scanning $WORK_DIR/*/state.json.

Step 3.2: For each session

Run Steps 2.2 → 2.4 from Update Mode. Between sessions, show a compact progress header:

[2/5] PROJ-123 — Payment Refund Flow
      Current: in_progress   Suggested: qa_ready
      PR #482 open, checks passing, 1 approval

Set lifecycle to? [ready_to_implement] [in_progress] [qa_ready] [qa] [done] [skip] [abort sync]

[abort sync] exits cleanly with whatever was already written.

Step 3.3: Summary

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Sync complete — 5 sessions reviewed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  ✓ PROJ-123   in_progress → qa_ready
  ✓ PROJ-456   qa_ready    → qa
  ✓ PROJ-789   qa          → done  (archived)
  · PROJ-790   no change
  · AUTH-001   skipped
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

---

Notes

• List and detail modes remain read-only. Only --update and --sync mutate state.
• No tracker integration. Jira/Linear/GitHub Issues status is out of scope; lifecycle is the plugin-internal view.
• gh CLI is required for PR status checks. If unavailable, --update still works — it just skips the suggestion and asks the user directly.
• Identifier ambiguity — always confirm with the user before mutating; never auto-pick a mutation target.