Skills

The boss-* skills are a suite of portable, config-driven Claude Code and Codex skills that automate the software delivery lifecycle: planning a backlog ticket, implementing it to a review-ready pull request, reviewing the branch, orchestrating a whole epic, repairing a red PR, and landing the work. Each skill is a self-contained workflow you invoke by name (for example /boss-build), and together they take a ticket from Unplanned → planned Todo → PR → review → merge with minimal hand-holding.

boss skills install extracts the suite into the global skill directory of every supported agent whose CLI is on PATH: Claude Code (~/.claude/skills), Codex (~/.codex/skills) and Hermes Agent (~/.hermes/skills, or $HERMES_HOME/skills when HERMES_HOME is set).

Every skill is built as a project-agnostic core plus a few pluggable seams, so the same suite runs in any repository. The Bossanova-specific coupling (the issue tracker, verification-evidence publishing, the session runner, and the PR-finalize policy) lives behind adapters that default to the Bossanova reference implementation. A repo adopting these skills configures them with a single .boss-skills.json file, and can extend a core skill's behaviour with repo-local add-ons without editing the skill body (see Extension System).

The skill suite

Each skill runs on its own, but they also compose: boss-plan emits a plan that boss-build consumes, boss-build dispatches boss-review inside its flow, and boss-epic orchestrates many boss-build runs and drives boss-repair on failures.

Skill	What it does
boss-plan	Plans a backlog ticket: recon, a plan-review pass, finalizes the rendered plan as a native tracker attachment, and writes a summary, labels, estimate, and priority back to the tracker. Moves the ticket Unplanned → Todo.
boss-build	Implements one planned ticket to a review-ready PR via subagent-driven TDD, a bounded review stack, and a clear terminal state (REVIEW_READY / PARTIAL / BLOCKED / NO_CHANGE), where PARTIAL opens a do-not-merge PR for a certified slice.
boss-review	Find-then-verify code review of a branch: parallel finders and a second model propose issues, a verifier confirms each, and only verified serious issues the change introduced block. Invoked by boss-build or run by hand.
boss-epic	Orchestrates a whole epic of planned tickets to merged PRs: dependency-ordered schedule, parallel implement sessions, serialized merges, and progress reported on the parent ticket.
boss-repair	Automated PR repair — fixes merge conflicts, failing checks, and review feedback.
boss-finalize	End-of-session workflow ensuring all work is committed and pushed ("land the plane").

Run the pipeline unattended

The ticket pipeline setup guide walks through an unattended plan → build → verify and merge pipeline with one cron job per stage. It covers prerequisites, labels and commit statuses, human approvals, selection filters, extensions, and troubleshooting.

The adapter model

The suite keeps its Bossanova coupling confined to four seams. Each seam is an adapter selected by configuration and defaulting to the Bossanova reference implementation, so omitting the configuration reproduces the built-in behaviour. To port the skills to a different stack, a repo ships a small module that conforms to the seam's capability contract and points the adapter at it; the skill bodies never change.

Seam	What it abstracts	Default implementation
tracker	Selecting, claiming, moving, and commenting on issues in the tracker.	linear
finalize	The tag-injection → draft-to-ready → repair policy when finalizing a PR.	boss-finalize
publish	Publishing verification evidence; implementation plans use native tracker attachments.	proof
sessionRunner	Session choreography plus implement / repair sub-skill dispatch.	bossd

The .boss-skills.json config

A consuming repo selects its adapters in a single .boss-skills.json file at its root. Bossanova's own selection reads:

{
  "adapters": {
    "tracker": "linear",
    "finalize": "boss-finalize",
    "publish": "proof",
    "sessionRunner": "bossd"
  }
}

Changing an adapter value swaps a seam. The same file carries the review choice, the build commands, the tracker identity, and the plan contract, and the loader validates all of it before a skill acts on it.

Learn more

• Ticket Pipeline shows the skills working together: tickets go from plan to build, verification and merge on a schedule.
• Skill Configuration covers every section of .boss-skills.json, the smallest config that switches the tracker-driven skills on, and what happens when a section is absent or wrong.
• Extension System covers extending a core skill's behaviour with repo-local add-ons (plan reviewers, verify judges, and implementation methodologies) without editing the skill body.