## Manager Context (pre-injected)
**State:**
**Roadmap:**
**Manager Data:**
Interactive command center for managing a milestone from a single terminal. Shows a dashboard of all phases with visual status, dispatches discuss inline and plan/execute as background agents, and loops back to the dashboard after each action. Enables parallel phase work from one terminal.
Read all files referenced by the invoking prompt's execution_context before starting.
## 1. Initialize
Bootstrap via manager init:
Parse JSON for: `milestone_version`, `milestone_name`, `phase_count`, `completed_count`, `in_progress_count`, `phases`, `recommended_actions`, `all_complete`, `waiting_signal`.
**If error:** Display the error message and exit.
Display startup banner:
```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GSD ► MANAGER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{milestone_version} - {milestone_name}
{phase_count} phases · {completed_count} complete
✓ Discuss → inline ◆ Plan/Execute → background
Dashboard auto-refreshes when background work is active.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```
Proceed to dashboard step.
## 2. Dashboard (Refresh Point)
**Every time this step is reached**, re-read state from disk to pick up changes from background agents:
Parse the full JSON. Build the dashboard display.
Build dashboard from JSON. Symbols: `✓` done, `◆` active, `○` pending, `·` queued. Progress bar: 20-char `█░`.
**Status mapping** (disk_status → D P E Status):
- `complete` → `✓ ✓ ✓` `✓ Complete`
- `partial` → `✓ ✓ ◆` `◆ Executing...`
- `planned` → `✓ ✓ ○` `○ Ready to execute`
- `discussed` → `✓ ○ ·` `○ Ready to plan`
- `researched` → `◆ · ·` `○ Ready to plan`
- `empty`/`no_directory` + `is_next_to_discuss` → `○ · ·` `○ Ready to discuss`
- `empty`/`no_directory` otherwise → `· · ·` `· Up next`
- If `is_active`, replace status icon with `◆` and append `(active)`
If any `is_active` phases, show: `◆ Background: {action} Phase {N}, ...` above grid.
Use `display_name` (not `name`) for the Phase column - it's pre-truncated to 20 chars with `…` if clipped. Pad all phase names to the same width for alignment.
Use `deps_display` from init JSON for the Deps column - shows which phases this phase depends on (e.g. `1,3`) or `-` for none.
Example output:
```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GSD ► DASHBOARD
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
████████████░░░░░░░░ 60% (3/5 phases)
◆ Background: Planning Phase 4
| # | Phase | Deps | D | P | E | Status |
| --- | -------------------- | ---- | --- | --- | --- | -------------------- |
| 1 | Foundation | - | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ Complete |
| 2 | API Layer | 1 | ✓ | ✓ | ◆ | ◆ Executing (active) |
| 3 | Auth System | 1 | ✓ | ✓ | ○ | ○ Ready to execute |
| 4 | Dashboard UI & Set… | 1,2 | ✓ | ◆ | · | ◆ Planning (active) |
| 5 | Notifications | - | ○ | · | · | ○ Ready to discuss |
| 6 | Polish & Final Mail… | 1-5 | · | · | · | · Up next |
```
**Recommendations section:**
If `all_complete` is true:
```
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ MILESTONE COMPLETE ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
All {phase_count} phases done. Ready for final steps:
→ /gsd-verify-work - run acceptance testing
→ /gsd-complete-milestone - archive and wrap up
```
Ask user via AskUserQuestion:
- **question:** "All phases complete. What next?"
- **options:** "Verify work" / "Complete milestone" / "Exit manager"
Handle responses:
- "Verify work": `Skill(skill="gsd-verify-work")` then loop to dashboard.
- "Complete milestone": `Skill(skill="gsd-complete-milestone")` then exit.
- "Exit manager": Go to exit step.
**If NOT all_complete**, build compound options from `recommended_actions`:
**Compound option logic:** Group background actions (plan/execute) together, and pair them with the single inline action (discuss) when one exists. The goal is to present the fewest options possible - one option can dispatch multiple background agents plus one inline action.
**Building options:**
1. Collect all background actions (execute and plan recommendations) - there can be multiple of each.
2. Collect the inline action (discuss recommendation, if any - there will be at most one since discuss is sequential).
3. Build compound options:
**If there are ANY recommended actions (background, inline, or both):**
Create ONE primary "Continue" option that dispatches ALL of them together:
- Label: `"Continue"` - always this exact word
- Below the label, list every action that will happen. Enumerate ALL recommended actions - do not cap or truncate:
```
Continue:
→ Execute Phase 32 (background)
→ Plan Phase 34 (background)
→ Discuss Phase 35 (inline)
```
- This dispatches all background agents first, then runs the inline discuss (if any).
- If there is no inline discuss, the dashboard refreshes after spawning background agents.
**Important:** The Continue option must include EVERY action from `recommended_actions` - not just 2. If there are 3 actions, list 3. If there are 5, list 5.
4. Always add:
- `"Refresh dashboard"`
- `"Exit manager"`
Display recommendations compactly:
```
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
▶ Next Steps
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Continue:
→ Execute Phase 32 (background)
→ Plan Phase 34 (background)
→ Discuss Phase 35 (inline)
```
**Auto-refresh:** If background agents are running (`is_active` is true for any phase), set a 60-second auto-refresh cycle. After presenting the action menu, if no user input is received within 60 seconds, automatically refresh the dashboard. This interval is configurable via `manager_refresh_interval` in GSD config (default: 60 seconds, set to 0 to disable).
Present via AskUserQuestion:
- **question:** "What would you like to do?"
- **options:** (compound options as built above + refresh + exit, AskUserQuestion auto-adds "Other")
**On "Other" (free text):** Parse intent - if it mentions a phase number and action, dispatch accordingly. If unclear, display available actions and loop to action_menu.
Proceed to handle_action step with the selected action.
## 4. Handle Action
### Refresh Dashboard
Loop back to dashboard step.
### Exit Manager
Go to exit step.
### Compound Action (background + inline)
When the user selects a compound option:
1. **Spawn all background agents first** (plan/execute) - dispatch them in parallel using the Plan Phase N / Execute Phase N handlers below.
2. **Then run the inline discuss:**
```
Skill(skill="gsd-discuss-phase", args="{PHASE_NUM}")
```
After discuss completes, loop back to dashboard step (background agents continue running).
### Discuss Phase N
Discussion is interactive - needs user input. Run inline:
```
Skill(skill="gsd-discuss-phase", args="{PHASE_NUM}")
```
After discuss completes, loop back to dashboard step.
### Plan Phase N
Planning runs autonomously. Spawn a background agent:
```
Task(
description="Plan phase {N}: {phase_name}",
run_in_background=true,
prompt="You are running the GSD plan-phase workflow for phase {N} of the project.
Working directory: {cwd}
Phase: {N} - {phase_name}
Goal: {goal}
Steps:
1. Read the plan-phase workflow: cat .pi/gsd/workflows/plan-phase.md
2. Run: pi-gsd-tools init plan-phase {N}
3. Follow the workflow steps to produce PLAN.md files for this phase.
4. If research is enabled in config, run the research step first.
5. Spawn a gsd-planner subagent via Task() to create the plans.
6. If plan-checker is enabled, spawn a gsd-plan-checker subagent to verify.
7. Commit plan files when complete.
Important: You are running in the background. Do NOT use AskUserQuestion - make autonomous decisions based on project context. If you hit a blocker, write it to STATE.md as a blocker and stop. Do NOT silently work around permission or file access errors - let them fail so the manager can surface them with resolution hints."
)
```
Display:
```
◆ Spawning planner for Phase {N}: {phase_name}...
```
Loop back to dashboard step.
### Execute Phase N
Execution runs autonomously. Spawn a background agent:
```
Task(
description="Execute phase {N}: {phase_name}",
run_in_background=true,
prompt="You are running the GSD execute-phase workflow for phase {N} of the project.
Working directory: {cwd}
Phase: {N} - {phase_name}
Goal: {goal}
Steps:
1. Read the execute-phase workflow: cat .pi/gsd/workflows/execute-phase.md
2. Run: pi-gsd-tools init execute-phase {N}
3. Follow the workflow steps: discover plans, analyze dependencies, group into waves.
4. For each wave, spawn gsd-executor subagents via Task() to execute plans in parallel.
5. After all waves complete, spawn a gsd-verifier subagent if verifier is enabled.
6. Update ROADMAP.md and STATE.md with progress.
7. Commit all changes.
Important: You are running in the background. Do NOT use AskUserQuestion - make autonomous decisions. Use --no-verify on git commits. If you hit a permission error, file lock, or any access issue, do NOT work around it - let it fail and write the error to STATE.md as a blocker so the manager can surface it with resolution guidance."
)
```
Display:
```
◆ Spawning executor for Phase {N}: {phase_name}...
```
Loop back to dashboard step.
## 5. Background Agent Completion
When notified that a background agent completed:
1. Read the result message from the agent.
2. Display a brief notification:
```
✓ {description}
{brief summary from agent result}
```
3. Loop back to dashboard step.
**If the agent reported an error or blocker:**
Classify the error:
**Permission / tool access error** (e.g. tool not allowed, permission denied, sandbox restriction):
- Parse the error to identify which tool or command was blocked.
- Display the error clearly, then offer to fix it:
- **question:** "Phase {N} failed - permission denied for `{tool_or_command}`. Want me to add it to settings.local.json so it's allowed?"
- **options:** "Add permission and retry" / "Run this phase inline instead" / "Skip and continue"
- "Add permission and retry": Use `Skill(skill="update-config")` to add the permission to `settings.local.json`, then re-spawn the background agent. Loop to dashboard.
- "Run this phase inline instead": Dispatch the same action (plan/execute) inline via `Skill()` instead of a background Task. Loop to dashboard after.
- "Skip and continue": Loop to dashboard (phase stays in current state).
**Other errors** (git lock, file conflict, logic error, etc.):
- Display the error, then offer options via AskUserQuestion:
- **question:** "Background agent for Phase {N} encountered an issue: {error}. What next?"
- **options:** "Retry" / "Run inline instead" / "Skip and continue" / "View details"
- "Retry": Re-spawn the same background agent. Loop to dashboard.
- "Run inline instead": Dispatch the action inline via `Skill()`. Loop to dashboard after.
- "Skip and continue": Loop to dashboard (phase stays in current state).
- "View details": Read STATE.md blockers section, display, then re-present options.
## 6. Exit
Display final status with progress bar:
```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GSD ► SESSION END
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{milestone_version} - {milestone_name}
{PROGRESS_BAR} {progress_pct}% ({completed_count}/{phase_count} phases)
Resume anytime: /gsd-manager
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```
**Note:** Any background agents still running will continue to completion. Their results will be visible on next `/gsd-manager` or `/gsd-progress` invocation.
- [ ] Dashboard displays all phases with correct status indicators (D/P/E/V columns)
- [ ] Progress bar shows accurate completion percentage
- [ ] Dependency resolution: blocked phases show which deps are missing
- [ ] Recommendations prioritize: execute > plan > discuss
- [ ] Discuss phases run inline via Skill() - interactive questions work
- [ ] Plan phases spawn background Task agents - return to dashboard immediately
- [ ] Execute phases spawn background Task agents - return to dashboard immediately
- [ ] Dashboard refreshes pick up changes from background agents via disk state
- [ ] Background agent completion triggers notification and dashboard refresh
- [ ] Background agent errors present retry/skip options
- [ ] All-complete state offers verify-work and complete-milestone
- [ ] Exit shows final status with resume instructions
- [ ] "Other" free-text input parsed for phase number and action
- [ ] Manager loop continues until user exits or milestone completes