relay-automation — sibling skill (bundled package)

Automates the portable /relay review loop on top of tick: turns pass hands-free (all-Claude /loop poll), a watchdog recovers stalls, and — with the Codex CLI or Antigravity CLI — a cross-model participant can take its turn headlessly (codex exec, agy -p). The portable /relay skill stays dependency-free; this tick-dependent automation is its sibling.

Components (in relay-pkg.tar.gz beside this file)

Script	Role
relay-automation/poll.sh	per-tick poll driver (run under /loop): claimability guard + dispatch; --deadline self-expiry
relay-automation/relay-drive.sh	relay-turn supervisor: loop a RELAY-TURN token to termination; round-cap + no-progress + close-mismatch escalation
relay-automation/watchdog.sh	liveness: tick analyze --format json → parked RELAY-TURN → structured escalation; gated reap stub
relay-automation/runner.sh	single verdict-gated turn (VERDICT: PASS|FAIL|PARKED) + artifact-scoped clean-tree gate
relay-automation/codex-turn.sh	Option A headless turn-taker: drives a Codex turn via codex exec behind a path-allowlist (no push)
relay-automation/agy-turn.sh	Option A headless turn-taker: drives an agy turn via agy -p behind the same path-allowlist boundary (no push)
relay-automation/README.md	operator usage (/loop invocations, self-closing loops, all-Claude boundary)
test/{poll-driver,poll-relay,watchdog-relay,codex-turn,agy-turn}.sh	the relay-automation suite

Dependency — E3 detect-or-extract (capability gate, NOT just presence)

The relay rides the Phase-1 handoff-exclusive tick rule (a claim/take of a task whose handoff_to is set and ≠ caller is rejected with zero events). A host that has tick but predates that change silently breaks the relay. Before using, run the gate; if it fails, install/patch tick (e.g. via the xyz skill, which self-extracts the full runtime) — then re-run the gate.

# capability gate — run at repo root after extracting; needs ./bin/tick
gate() {
  local t=./bin/tick d; d="$(mktemp -d)"; TICK_REPO_ROOT="$d" $t init >/dev/null
  TICK_REPO_ROOT="$d" $t log task.created _CAP --agent a >/dev/null
  TICK_REPO_ROOT="$d" $t claim _CAP --agent a --paths "x/**" >/dev/null
  TICK_REPO_ROOT="$d" $t release _CAP --agent a --to b >/dev/null
  local n m; n=$(ls "$d/.tick/events" | wc -l)
  TICK_REPO_ROOT="$d" $t claim _CAP --agent c --paths "x/**" >/dev/null 2>&1   # wrong-handoff: must be rejected, zero events
  m=$(ls "$d/.tick/events" | wc -l); rm -rf "$d"
  [ "$n" = "$m" ] && echo "tick capability OK (handoff-exclusive)" || { echo "FAIL: host tick lacks handoff-exclusive — install/patch tick (xyz skill) first"; return 1; }
}
gate

Install

Native Claude subscription support requires the full XYZ checkout or the current Tier 1/2 vendored harness (xyz-vendor.sh), which includes the Python runtime under utils/py/. This legacy partial tarball does not contain the Claude/consult adapters or their Python helpers; extracting it alone does not enable GH-610. Follow the relay-xyz installation instructions for that route.

The relay scripts + tests ship as relay-pkg.tar.gz beside this SKILL.md (regenerable from sources via make-pkg.sh). Extract into a repo that already has a capable tick (run the gate first):

DIR="${1:-.}"                        # target repo root (must contain ./bin/tick)
tar xzf skills/1-hourly/relay-automation/relay-pkg.tar.gz -C "$DIR"
# in a target repo that allows new suites, wire the 4 tests into its validate.sh TESTS=( ... );
# XYZ-forge itself registers no new suites (GH-831). Then:
cd "$DIR" && bash validate.sh        # the relay-automation tests pass alongside tick's

Usage

See the extracted relay-automation/README.md — /loop invocations (hands-free relay turn, designated watchdog poller, single-process supervision), self-closing loops (--deadline + self-delete; cron jobs are per-session — always set a deadline), the all-Claude boundary (cross-model stays manual nudge unless driven via codex-turn.sh or agy-turn.sh), and the Option A headless bring-up paths for Codex and agy (dispatch-gated, path-allowlisted, no push).