issue-lifecycle skill: improve resumption and close-out guidance
Opened by stack72 · 4/9/2026· Shipped 4/9/2026
Problem Statement
The issue-lifecycle skill's "Resuming a Session" section (SKILL.md lines 109-118) has three gaps that cause agents to corrupt lifecycle state when picking up an issue mid-flight:
Wrong resume command. The section says to run
swamp model get issue-<N> --json, which returns the model definition (methods, schemas) — not the current phase. The correct command isswamp data get issue-<N> state-main --json.No warning that
startresets state. Thestartmethod always resets the phase totriaging, even if the issue was atpr_open. An agent that doesn't know this callsstartthinking it's idempotent, then gets stuck because the model enforces strict phase transitions.No close-out workflow. When a PR has already merged and the lifecycle just needs to be marked shipped, there's no guidance. The agent ends up manually walking through every intermediate phase transition.
Proposed Solution
Three changes to the skill files:
Rewrite "Resuming a Session" in SKILL.md — use the correct
swamp data getcommand, add a warning aboutstart, and include a phase-to-action reference table mapping each phase to what to do next when resuming.Add "Closing Out a Shipped Issue" section in SKILL.md — a short workflow for the common case: check current phase, link PR if needed, call
complete.Add
startsafety warning in references/triage.md — a blockquote after thestartmethod usage in section 2 clarifying thatstartshould only be called once per issue.
Alternatives Considered
A detailed implementation plan with exact line numbers and replacement text is available in the plan file at .claude/plans/twinkly-humming-mango.md in the swamp repo working directory.
Environment
- swamp version: 20260409.030033.0-sha.07dae003
- OS: macOS Darwin 25.3.0
Shipped
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