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, capturing proof media, 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 → proof with minimal hand-holding.

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, the plan-publish store, 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 and boss-proof 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, hosts the rendered plan, and writes a summary, labels, estimate, priority, and plan link 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 / BLOCKED / NO_CHANGE).
boss-review	Multi-lens, subagent-driven code review of a branch; fixes must-fix findings and emits an Assessment / Evidence / Confidence report. 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-proof	Captures proof-of-implementation media (screenshots and video) for a PR's changed surfaces and comments it on the PR.
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").

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	Uploading the rendered plan to a public host so it can be linked.	proof
sessionRunner	Session choreography plus implement / repair sub-skill dispatch.	bossd

The .boss-skills.json config

A consuming repo drops a single .boss-skills.json file at its root. The skills read it instead of any hard-coded settings — the loader walks up from the working directory, merges the file over built-in defaults, and validates it. Alongside the adapter selection, the config declares the review lensMap, the build/lint/test commands, the headless-mode env signals, and the versioned planContract that boss-plan emits and boss-build consumes.

The adapter block in Bossanova's own config reads:

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

Editing .boss-skills.json is how a repo retargets the suite: change an adapter value to swap a seam, adjust commands to match the repo's build system, or reclassify a planContract section. Because the config is declarative and validated, the skills fail fast on an unknown adapter selector rather than silently misbehaving.

Learn more

• Extension System — how to extend a core skill's behaviour with repo-local add-ons (extra review lenses, proof surfaces, plan reviewers, and implementation methodologies) without editing the skill body.