catch

Catch

Generate a by-developer catch-up report over a recent time window (default: the last two weeks) so a developer can absorb the overall direction of the repository and how each individual is taking their part, then ask follow-up questions to go deeper. /catch reads tickets, branch stories, docs, and commit messages: it writes no files and makes no commits. The one write it performs is a best-effort git fetch at the start of the scan, which updates only remote-tracking refs (refs/remotes/*) so the report reflects what teammates have pushed — never the working tree, the index, or any project file.

Agent Compatibility

This skill works on any Agent-Skills-compatible agent. Unlike /trip (which depends on Claude Code Agent Teams), /catch is a portable skill — the two Claude-Code mechanisms it uses are enhancements, not requirements:

• Parallel fan-out — Phase 1 spawns one general-purpose collector subagent per active developer (model: "haiku") so the per-developer summaries run concurrently and cheaply. On agents without subagents, run the Collect Developer section sequentially in the same session, once per developer — the inputs and outputs are identical.
• Model routing — model: "haiku" is a Claude-Code cost/speed hint for the collectors. On other agents it is ignored; use whatever model is available.

There is no AskUserQuestion in this workflow. /catch runs to completion and prints a report; the follow-up Q&A is ordinary conversation, so the skill is fully portable.

Run Workflow

The /catch command (main agent) runs this workflow directly: it executes the bash/Read steps inline, spawns the per-developer collectors as general-purpose subagents, and synthesizes the report itself. Fan-out stays one level deep — collectors are non-interactive leaves that read files and return JSON; they never spawn further subagents and never prompt the user.

Policy Lens (read first)

Before judging development direction, load the project's engineering policies as your lens: workaholic:planning, workaholic:design, workaholic:implementation, and workaholic:operation. On Claude Code these arrive automatically (this skill preloads them and the /catch command's policy-lens.sh hook injects the index); on other agents, open each index skill yourself. When the report characterizes a developer's direction (e.g. "consolidating infrastructure", "hardening operation"), frame it against the relevant pillar's intent rather than inventing categories. The report describes activity — it does not grade it — so keep characterizations factual and verifiable (see workaholic:implementation / objective-documentation).

Phase 0: Gather the Window and Roster

1. Determine the window from $ARGUMENT: if the invocation names a span (e.g. /catch 30 days, /catch "1 month"), pass it through; otherwise default to 2 weeks ago. Any git log --since expression is valid.

2. Run the scan script:

   bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/catch/scripts/scan-window.sh "<window>"
   

   The script first runs a best-effort, bounded git fetch --all --prune (capped at CATCH_FETCH_TIMEOUT seconds, default 20, where the timeout utility exists; CATCH_FETCH_TIMEOUT=0 skips the fetch entirely — either degradation reports fetch_ok: false, never a stalled /catch) so remote-tracking branches reflect what teammates have pushed, then scans --branches --remotes (local heads and remote-tracking refs) — so a branch that lives only on the remote appears too. It returns { window, fetch_ok, buckets, developers[], tickets[], stories[], deployments[], missions[] }:

   • fetch_ok — whether that startup fetch succeeded. false means the remote could not be refreshed (offline, no remote, auth); the scan still runs against whatever refs are local, and the report notes the view may be stale (see step 5).
   • buckets — the epoch boundaries the scanner used to time-bucket commits: recent_start (start of yesterday — the yesterday+today window), week_start (Monday 00:00 of the current week), last_week_start (Monday 00:00 of the previous week).
   • developers[] — each active author in the window: name, email, commit_count, commits[], and branches[]. email is the join key for the by-developer axis.
     • each commit carries hash, subject, timestamp (ISO), epoch (committer epoch), branch (the branch it was reached from), and bucket — one of recent (yesterday+today), this_week (this calendar week but before yesterday), last_week (the previous calendar week), or older.
     • branches[] — the developer's branches active in the window, each with name and commit_count, most active first. (The scan uses --branches --remotes, so unmerged local topic branches and remote-only branches are included; the refs/remotes/<remote>/ prefix is stripped, so a branch present both locally and on the remote collapses to one entry.)
   • tickets[] — every ticket under todo/archive/icebox/abandoned with its frontmatter author, title, scope, mission (the mission: relation as a list of slugs — [] when none; a ticket can advance several), and commit_hash (derived from git — the commit that archived the ticket — on archived tickets, "" on unarchived ones; never read from frontmatter, where a stale pre-amend value may linger). Group these by author to match each developer's commits; group by mission to attribute a developer's missioned work, and use commit_hash to tie an archived missioned ticket back to a commit in the window.
   • stories[] — branch-story file paths under .workaholic/stories/, the narrative record of completed branches.
   • deployments[] — this week's deployments/releases, one per branch story carrying a ## Deployment Evidence block (written by /ship): branch, author (the join key — the evidence block's recorded By: deployer; only legacy blocks that predate the stamp fall back to the git author of the ship commit), timestamp (the evidence When:), release_title (the matching release-notes/<branch>.md H1, or the story H1), status (pass/fail/bypassed), and confirmation (the evidence Observed: line — empty when none was recorded). Filtered to the current calendar week.
   • missions[] — every mission (from the mission skill's own list.sh, so progress stays derived, never stored): slug, title, status (active/achieved/abandoned), checked, total (merged acceptance progress, checked ÷ total), plus two window-scoped views. window_events[] — the mission's ## Changelog lines dated within the window ({date, event, artifact} — merged activity: ticket archived / story reported / concern deferred|resolved). in_flight[] — open tickets (todo/icebox — archived tickets are merged, abandoned tickets are dead; neither is in flight) whose mission: list contains this slug (a ticket advancing two missions appears under both — that is the point of the relation being many-valued) ({path, title, author, scope}): progress toward the mission from work still on a branch, which the merge-time changelog and checked/total cannot yet reflect. The scan reads missions read-only — it mutates no mission.md content (no changelog append, no acceptance tick); the one tree change it can trigger is the mission scripts' living layout migration (a legacy flat missions/<slug>/ dir relocating into active/ or archive/ by its status, bytes untouched). Missions are enumerated across both areas.

3. Run bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/gather/scripts/git-context.sh to get repo_url (used to render commit links) and branch.

4. Empty window: if developers[] is empty, print "No commits in the last <window>." and suggest a wider window (e.g. /catch 1 month). Stop — there is nothing to summarize.

5. Stale-view note: if fetch_ok is false, the remote could not be refreshed, so pushed work by others may be missing. Add a short note to the report (a line under the report title) stating the remote was not reachable and the view may be stale — do not present a local-only scan as an up-to-date remote view (workaholic:implementation / objective-documentation). When fetch_ok is true, add nothing.

Phase 1: Collect Per Developer (parallel fan-out)

Spawn one general-purpose subagent per developer in developers[], in a single message (model: "haiku"). Each prompt instructs the collector to preload workaholic:catch, run the Collect Developer section, and return that section's JSON. Pass each collector:

• the developer's name, email, commits[], and branches[] (from developers[]);
• the buckets boundaries (so the collector knows what each commit's bucket means);
• the subset of tickets[] whose author equals this developer's email (each ticket now carries mission and commit_hash, so the collector can attribute the developer's missioned work);
• the subset of deployments[] whose author equals this developer's email;
• the missions[] array (so the collector can name the missions its developer advanced — matching a merged ticket's commit_hash to the developer's commits[], and an in-flight todo ticket by its mission slug);
• the stories[] list and repo_url (so it can read stories and link commits).

Bots are developers too only if relevant — by default skip authors whose email contains [bot] (e.g. github-actions[bot]) unless the user asked to include automation. Note any skipped bot authors in the final report's footnote.

Wait for all collectors to finish. Track which succeeded and which failed; a failed collector becomes a "could not summarize" line in the report, never a blocker.

Phase 2: Synthesize the Report

Assemble the collectors' JSON into the Report Structure below. Three parts:

1. Overall Direction — your own synthesis across all developers: the dominant themes of the window, where effort concentrated, and how the individual threads fit together. This is the part the developer reads first to orient. Where a mission dominates the window's effort, fold a one-line read of it into this synthesis.
2. Missions — a cross-cutting section, synthesized by you (the main agent) directly from the scanner's missions[] (not from the collectors — this is the one-level-fan-out rule: cross-developer synthesis stays in the main agent). One entry per active mission: its derived progress (checked/total), the merged activity under it this window (window_events), and the unmerged in-flight work (in_flight) — rendered so merged progress and in-flight work are never conflated. This is the "how far has each mission come, and what's heading toward it" view.
3. By Developer — one section per developer, populated verbatim from that collector's returned fields, including the developer's missions attribution line.

Print the full report to the developer.

Phase 3: Stand Ready for Questions

After printing, the developer will ask follow-up questions to understand a thread more deeply or to discuss direction. Answer from the gathered context; read the specific tickets, stories, commits, or source files a question points at (you have their paths and hashes). No special mechanism — this is normal conversation.

Collect Developer

Run by a Phase 1 collector (a general-purpose subagent that preloads this skill), once per developer. Inputs (from the command): name, email, commits[], this developer's tickets[] (each with mission/commit_hash), the missions[] array, the stories[] paths, and repo_url.

Task — characterize what this developer worked on in the window, factually:

1. Read the developer's commits[] bodies (they carry the structured Why: / Changes: / Concerns: / Insights: keys from the commit format) and subjects.
2. Read the developer's tickets[] (their ## Overview and ## Final Report) for intent and outcome behind the commits.
3. Skim any stories[] that clearly cover this developer's branches (match by title/theme) for the narrative arc — do not read all 50; sample the ones that match.
4. Summarize focus areas (what parts of the system they touched), themes (the through-line of the work), notable changes (the few highest-impact items, each with a commit hash), and open threads (deferred concerns, unfinished tickets in todo, or Concerns: keys from commit bodies).
5. Time-windowed focus — summarize the work in three buckets using each commit's bucket field:
   • recent_focus — from commits with bucket: "recent" (yesterday + today). What they're on right now.
   • week_focus — from commits with bucket: "recent" or "this_week" (the full current calendar week — "this week" includes the recent days).
   • last_week_focus — from commits with bucket: "last_week" (the previous calendar week). Each is one line; if a bucket has no commits, return an empty string (do not pad).
6. Struggles — what they're wrestling with, drawn only from concrete signals: Concerns: keys in their commit bodies, their open todo/icebox tickets, their abandoned tickets (each carries a ## Failure Analysis — the strongest struggle signal there is), and matching story ## 6. Concerns blocks. Each item should be traceable to its source; return [] if there is no real signal (do not invent difficulty).
7. Per-branch focus — for each entry in the developer's branches[], write a one-line focus derived from the subjects of that branch's commits. Carry through name and commit_count from the input.
8. Generation style — an explicit guess at how the work was produced, inferred from the commit timestamp/epoch shape: commits spread across daytime hours over several days ⇒ "daytime ticket-driving"; a dense cluster of commits in one overnight run on a single branch ⇒ "overnight long-running drive"; a mix ⇒ describe both. Phrase it as an inference ("looks like…"), never as asserted fact.
9. Deployments / releases this week — from the developer's deployments[] (already filtered to this week and to this developer by author), build one entry per deployment: timestamp, release_title, status, and confirmation. For any entry whose confirmation is empty (a ship that recorded no production confirmation), and when the developer has shipped this week but deployments[] is empty for them, set deployments_fallback to the guidance that the confirmation could not be referenced and /ship can capture it going forward (it deploys and confirms in production before merge). Render status: bypassed/fail distinctly — never as a confirmed deployment. Do not fabricate a confirmation that was not recorded (workaholic:operation / ci-cd).
10. Missions advanced — the missions this developer moved this window, drawn from the join between their tickets[] and the missions[] list. For each mission slug that appears on any of this developer's tickets, build one entry: slug, title (from missions[]), merged (their archived tickets carrying that slug whose commit_hash is among this developer's commits[] — each {title, hash}), and in_flight (their unarchived todo/icebox tickets carrying that slug — each {title, scope}). Return [] when none of the developer's tickets carry a mission. Attribution is at ticket granularity: never assert that an individual raw commit belongs to a mission unless it is the commit_hash of a missioned archived ticket (workaholic:implementation / objective-documentation).

Keep it factual and verifiable — name files, hashes, and tickets; avoid evaluative adjectives ("elegant", "powerful"). Do not invent activity not present in the inputs. The generation-style guess is the one inference allowed, and it must be labelled as a guess (workaholic:implementation / objective-documentation).

Collector Output (JSON)

{
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "name": "TAMURA Yoshiya",
  "commit_count": 145,
  "headline": "One-sentence summary of this developer's window.",
  "focus_areas": ["cross-agent build pipeline", "ship/deploy gating"],
  "themes": "1-3 sentence narrative of the through-line connecting the work.",
  "recent_focus": "Yesterday/today: hardening the /catch scanner and its tests.",
  "week_focus": "This week: branch-guard fixes, check-deps staleness, /catch enrichment.",
  "last_week_focus": "Last week: deployment-confirmation gating in /ship.",
  "struggles": ["outputs/ freshness drift if a build step is skipped (Concerns: in 5059220)"],
  "branches": [
    { "name": "work-20260630-050446", "commit_count": 6, "focus": "guard + check-deps + catch tickets" }
  ],
  "generation_style": "Looks like daytime ticket-driving — commits spread across working hours over several days, one branch.",
  "deployments": [
    { "timestamp": "2026-07-01T10:00:00+09:00", "release_title": "Ship gate confirms before merge", "status": "pass", "confirmation": "homepage shows v1.0.69" }
  ],
  "deployments_fallback": "",
  "notable_changes": [
    { "title": "Ship gate now confirms in production before merge", "hash": "abc1234" }
  ],
  "open_threads": ["deferred concern: outputs/ freshness drift if build skipped"],
  "missions": [
    {
      "slug": "rt-notify",
      "title": "Real-time Notifications",
      "merged": [ { "title": "Persist notification prefs", "hash": "abc1234" } ],
      "in_flight": [ { "title": "Wire the websocket fan-out", "scope": "todo" } ]
    }
  ]
}

deployments_fallback is a non-empty string only when this developer shipped this week but no referenceable confirmation exists (empty otherwise) — it carries the "/ship can capture it going forward" guidance. missions is [] when none of the developer's tickets carry a mission; merged and in_flight stay disjoint (an archived ticket is never also in-flight).

If a developer's window is thin (a few commits, no tickets), return a short headline, empty strings/arrays for the windowed fields, and the real branches/generation_style rather than padding — the report shows the real shape of the work.

Report Structure

The printed report (Markdown):

# Catch-up — last <window> (<branch>)

## Overall Direction

<2-4 sentence synthesis across all developers: dominant themes, where effort
concentrated, how the individual threads fit together.>

**Active this window:** <N> developer(s), <total> commits.

## Missions

<One block per **active** mission from the scanner's `missions[]`, synthesized by
the main agent. Omit the whole section when there are no active missions. Order
missions by this-window activity (most active first), then by slug.>

### <title> — <checked>/<total> (<status>)

<Optional one-line framing of where the mission stands.>

- **Progress this window (merged):**
  - <date> — <event> — <artifact> (<author> [<hash>](<repo_url>/commit/<hash>) when a `commit_hash` join exists)
  - _or "— none this window"_
- **In flight (unmerged):**
  - <in_flight title> — <author> — <scope> — <branch / latest commit subject where available> _(not yet counted in <checked>/<total>)_
  - _or "— none"_

### <Next active mission> ...

## By Developer

### <Name> (<email>) — <commit_count> commits

**<headline>**

- **Yesterday + today:** <recent_focus, or "—">
- **This week:** <week_focus, or "—">
- **Last week:** <last_week_focus, or "—">
- **Focus areas:** <focus_areas, comma-separated>
- **Themes:** <themes>
- **Struggling with:** <struggles as sub-bullets, or "None surfaced">
- **Branches:**
  - <name> — <commit_count> commits — <focus>
- **Generation style:** <generation_style>
- **Deployments / releases this week:**
  - <timestamp> — <release_title> — <status> — "<confirmation>"
  - _<deployments_fallback, when set>_
- **Notable changes:**
  - <title> ([<hash>](<repo_url>/commit/<hash>))
- **Open threads:** <open_threads, or "None">
- **Missions:** <per mission in `missions`: "<title> — <N> merged (<hashes>), <M> in flight (<titles>)">, or "—">

### <Next developer> ...

Guidelines:

• Commit hashes are clickable links: ([abc1234](<repo_url>/commit/abc1234)), never bare text. Branch names link too where useful: ([work-…](<repo_url>/tree/work-…)).
• Order developers by commit_count descending (most active first).
• The three time windows (yesterday+today / this week / last week) come straight from the collector's bucketed focus; render — for an empty window rather than omitting the line, so the shape of recent vs. older activity is visible at a glance.
• Generation style is an inference — keep the "looks like…" framing; never present it as fact.
• Deployments / releases: render pass plainly, but mark bypassed (accepted-risk merge, production unverified) and fail distinctly — never collapse them into "confirmed". When deployments_fallback is set, render it as the italic fallback line instead of (or below) the list, so the developer sees that /ship can capture the missing confirmation. Omit the whole subsection only when the developer made no deployments this week and has no fallback.
• If a collector failed, render its section as _Could not summarize — <N> commits, see git log._ and continue.
• Footnote any skipped bot authors: _Skipped automated authors: github-actions[bot] (2 commits)._
• Missions: progress is the derived checked/total — the only number; never add in-flight tickets into it. Render merged activity (window_events) and unmerged in_flight as separate lists, and mark in-flight explicitly as not yet counted, so unmerged work is never mistaken for landed progress. A commit link on a merged event is drawn only from a missioned ticket's commit_hash; do not assert a raw commit belongs to a mission otherwise (workaholic:implementation / objective-documentation). Show an active mission even when it had no window activity (its standing progress is still informative); render achieved/abandoned missions compactly or omit them. Omit the whole ## Missions section only when there are no active missions.
• The per-developer Missions: line is that developer's slice (their merged + in-flight tickets for each mission); render — when they advanced none. It complements, and must agree with, the top-level ## Missions section.
• Keep the report skimmable — the developer reads it, then asks questions. Do not pad.

Writing Guidelines

• Describe actual activity, not aspiration — every characterization must be checkable against a commit, ticket, or story (workaholic:implementation / objective-documentation).
• Third person, past tense for completed work.
• Overall Direction and Missions are the two places you synthesize across developers (both are main-agent work — collectors never see the whole picture); the per-developer sections stay faithful to each collector's returned facts, including its missions attribution.
• Prefer naming the concrete artifact (file, hash, ticket) over a vague summary, so a follow-up question has somewhere to land.