Using GC

Use Gas City only when the caller explicitly selects it. Treat it as a replaceable execution adapter, not a correctness or completion boundary. The adapter cannot select AgentOps semantics, issue a binding verdict, or turn factory completion into delivery or validation proof.

The operator lane

The operator lane into a city is a closed set:

• author source intent beads;
• gc mail to the Mayor, for work dispatch and for city tending;
• gc session wake <run_target>, once, for a routed bead whose worker stalled;
• gc doctor [--fix], and supervisor start/stop from outside the city;
• ao gc prepare|check|recover-affinity;
• reading run, session, bead, pane and artifact state.

The Mayor authors workflow beads and dispatches them; it owns retries, re-dispatch and tending for that work. Never create, scale or repair pack-owned sessions by hand: gc session new for a singleton or scaled agent (core.control-dispatcher, role workers) makes a mis-scoped session that squats the canonical name in start-pending and blocks the reconciler from spawning the real one. Session lifecycle belongs to the reconciler and demand scaling. Direct gc sling is a debugging tool for a city with no live Mayor; a run started that way has no coordinator, and the operator inherits its tending.

Choose the factory first

AgentOps supports both Gas City and the Agentic Coding Flywheel as external software-factory runtimes. Use this skill only for Gas City. If the caller selects the Flywheel, follow its native workflow instead of wrapping it in Gas City.

AgentOps supplies skills and evidence contracts to either factory. It does not need its own Gas City formula or role pack. Install or link AgentOps skills into the provider runtime before starting workers; the upstream Mayor, coordinator, and workers can then discover and select plan, implement, test, validate, and other AgentOps skills normally.

Version facts

Status on 2026-10-04: the gascity pin (0.1.6, commit 3b3b89f2011e06d84459aa7bea1552382f13930a) is the commit ao gc enforces, and it matches the registry's 0.1.6 release. The Gas City 1.4.0 command facts in this skill were not re-verified for this release. When gc version reports anything other than 1.4.0, confirm each command with gc <command> --help before relying on it.

Gas City 1.4 operating model

Gas City 1.4 is run-centered. The supervisor serves the dashboard and typed, paginated session/run APIs. Every graph-owning city or rig scope needs its own core.control-dispatcher; that deterministic worker advances formula control beads. Agent workers claim routed work. The upstream gc.mayor skill is the guided coordinator; gc.run-operator launches and supervises formulas.

The normal AgentOps path is:

1. Install and pin the upstream gascity workflow and rig-role imports.
2. Add the project as a rig, prepare its stock maintainer runtime, and make AgentOps skills visible to its provider sessions.
3. Create a caller-owned source intent bead and hand its id to the Mayor, which authors the workflow beads and dispatches the upstream build-basic, continuation, review, or implementation formula that matches the available artifacts.
4. Read run, session, bead, artifact, and verdict state. Completion is never inferred from chat or pane prose.

Prepare and check a rig

Prepare and qualify a rig before its first build with the shipped AgentOps CLI (no repo checkout required):

ao gc prepare --city /path/to/city --rig /path/to/rig
ao gc check --city /path/to/city --rig /path/to/rig

prepare verifies the exact official workflow and role pins, stages a contained maintainer runtime inside the rig's .gc directory, links the AgentOps skills into the city and rig Codex sinks, and pre-seeds Codex workspace and hook trust for every session directory that exists when it runs. Hook trust needs the Codex CLI on PATH (or --codex-bin). check is read-only, runs no Codex subprocess, and fails before model spend when that runtime contract is missing or drifted.

Run prepare, start the city, then run prepare again (it is idempotent) before dispatching. Two limitations make that order necessary: check cannot see a stale trust hash, so green means trust is recorded, not fresh; and a session home created after prepare is not covered. Codex trust pre-seed has the mechanism.

Preferred pack and registries

The built-in main registry catalogs official packs. The community registry is optional configuration:

gc pack registry list
gc pack registry refresh
gc pack registry search --all
gc pack registry show main:gascity
gc pack registry add community https://registry.gascity.com/registry.toml
gc pack registry search --registry community --all

search reads the local registry cache; show reports release provenance and exact import commands. gc import add declares a source/version, and gc import install resolves it into packs.lock. Prefer an exact accepted release for reproducible cities.

AgentOps prefers the official gascity build pack, the workflow family visible in the public Maintainer City factory, at the accepted reference above:

• dashboard: https://factory.gascity.com;
• workflows: build-basic, build-from-*, implement, review, issue, and PR flows;
• stock rig roles: gc.run-operator, gc.implementation-worker, planners, reviewers, and publisher;
• scope-local formula control: core.control-dispatcher;
• guided coordination: the upstream gc.mayor skill.

Install the workflow pack at city scope and its sibling roles pack on every rig that runs work, following the exact commands returned by gc pack registry show main:gascity. Keep the stock gc.* namespace; do not nest or rename the roles behind an AgentOps pack.

Hand work to the Mayor

Work enters the city through the Mayor. The caller authors ONE source intent bead with acceptance, then hands the Mayor its id; the Mayor decomposes, authors the workflow beads, and dispatches.

gc bd create "Add a --json flag to the export command"
gc mail send mayor -s "Build ago-XXXX" \
  -m "Decompose and launch build-basic for bead ago-XXXX with push=true open_pr=true." --notify

Or, in an interactive Mayor session:

Use skill gc.mayor

AgentOps skills are tools available to those factory agents, not a replacement workflow. Explicitly name a skill in the bead or prompt when its behavior is required. The current upstream decomposition does not automatically propagate a free-form Required Skills section from the caller-owned source bead into every generated work item. Inspect the decomposition before implementation; put a required skill name on the actual work item or worker prompt when its use is an acceptance condition. Skill presence and skill invocation are different facts.

Upgrade an existing city to 1.4

Before starting its orchestrator, run once per city:

gc doctor --fix
gc import install
gc supervisor stop --wait   # macOS when an older direct supervisor remains
gc start

Then confirm:

• gc version reports 1.4.0 from the intended path;
• gc doctor has no blocking failures;
• each graph-owning rig has an unsuspended core.control-dispatcher;
• imports and packs.lock resolve;
• ao gc check accepts the contained maintainer runtime and AgentOps skill links;
• on macOS, the supervisor LaunchAgent resolves to the same executable as the selected gc binary;
• old standalone-dashboard bookmarks or reverse proxies are removed.

A stale registered city may block every start. Repair that city with gc doctor --fix, or explicitly unregister it if it is intentionally retired.

Retire an old HQ/canary by exact registered name or path, without stopping the machine-wide supervisor needed by its replacement:

gc cities --json
gc stop /path/to/old-city --timeout 45s
gc unregister /path/to/old-city
gc cities --json

unregister fails rather than silently accepting an unknown target. Preserve the city directory until its Beads state is backed up or confirmed disposable. Create the replacement from the upstream Gas City template, install its pinned imports, and verify it with gc cities --json, gc --city <new-city> status, and gc --city <new-city> doctor --json.

Orchestrating through the Mayor: the tending loop

After handing intent to the Mayor, the orchestrator runs five verbs. Each verb has one owner; crossing owners is the recurring failure class this section exists to stop.

Verb	Owner	Surface
Monitor	orchestrator	$API/runs/census and $API/runs/<run-id> on a fixed cadence, plus gc mail inbox for Mayor replies. failed > 0 in the census, a run in failed/canceled, or unread Mayor mail is the act signal; everything else is a tick.
Observe	orchestrator	On an act signal, walk the visibility layers in order — census, run detail, bead graph, session roster, pane truth — and stop at the first layer that explains. Do not start at pane truth.
Nudge	orchestrator, once	A routed bead with a live session: gc session wake <run_target> once. A ready bead nobody dispatched goes to the Mayor by mail with its id; dispatch is the Mayor's. A second nudge on the same subject means the diagnosis is wrong — mail the Mayor instead.
Redirect	Mayor	Priority, scope, cancellation, or model/provider changes travel by mail with bead/run ids. The orchestrator never re-slings, edits workflow beads, or patches a live run.
Rework	GC first, then Mayor	Failed review findings re-enter the run through its native fix loop (review_fix_formula, default fix-loop-base); bounded gated retries are gc converge loops. Only a TERMINAL failed/canceled run — or a completed run whose result misses caller acceptance — goes back: mail the Mayor the run id and the failure evidence for re-decompose and relaunch.

Rework the orchestrator performs by hand (editing a failed run's worktree, re-slinging its formula, closing its beads) creates a second uncoordinated author for the same intent; the Mayor's relaunch then races it.

Stall protocol

First classify the bead.

• Still ready, never dispatched: dispatch belongs to the Mayor. Mail it the bead id, then stop and inspect. Only with no live Mayor is gc sling <run_target> <bead-id>, once, the debugging fallback, and the operator then inherits that run's tending.

• Already routed/in progress: re-slinging is a NO-OP. Wake its owning worker once:

  gc session wake <run_target>
  

Then capture the exact tmux pane named by session state and run gc doctor. A pane parked on a Codex trust dialog means its home missed the pre-seed (see pane truth below). Never repair a city from inside that city. Never answer a stall with gc session new; the operator lane above explains why.

When one wake does not clear the stall, or the city itself needs tending (a stalled reconciler, sessions that never leave draining, model or provider rewiring), send the request to the Mayor with the bead or run ids:

gc mail send mayor -s "<subject>" -m "<request with bead ids>" --notify

The upstream pack may leave a future affinity-bound step assigned to a session that has already drain-acked. Diagnose this only from outside the city:

ao gc recover-affinity --city /path/to/city --rig /path/to/rig

The default is a dry run. If every listed assignment is correct, repeat with --apply. The bounded repair only clears the assignee on a currently ready formula bead whose gc.session_affinity=require session is no longer live. It does not sling, retry, close, restart, or select work.

Visibility: four layers

1. Supervisor/run state — gc dashboard, run detail, gc status, and gc session list --json. Run detail unifies the stage ladder, structured transcripts, token rate, and estimated burn rate. A roster may still report active while a provider is wedged.

   Programmatic run status comes from the supervisor's typed run API — the same data the dashboard renders. gc status prints the API base; neither gc status --json nor any other CLI subcommand carries run objects.

   API="http://127.0.0.1:<port>/v0/city/<city-name>"
   curl -s "$API/runs/<run-id>"   # {run_id, title, status, target, scope, started_at, updated_at}
   curl -s "$API/runs/census"     # {status_counts: {pending, active, waiting, canceling, completed, failed, canceled, skipped}}
   

   Poll run status and census for progress; a nonzero failed count is the first machine-readable failure signal. The dashboard's run page (/city/<city-name>/runs/<run-id>) is the human view of the same objects.

2. Bead graph — gc bd --rig <rig> ready --json and show <id> --json. This is workflow-state truth, but a claimed bead cannot reveal a wedged pane.

3. Pane truth — tmux -L <socket> capture-pane -pt <session>. This exposes trust prompts, update nags, API/DNS failures, and interactive wedges. A pane parked on Codex's Do you trust the contents of this directory? (or the later Press t to trust all hooks dialog) means that session directory was not pre-seeded — the workflow queues dispatches as pending with no active worker and reports no error. Almost always the home was created after the last ao gc prepare; re-run prepare, then restart that session. ao gc check names the untrusted directory or hook before you spend a dispatch on it. Gas City also appears to auto-answer this dialog by sending keys into the pane, so a wedge may clear on its own — treat that as a race you do not want to depend on, not as a reason to skip the pre-seed.

4. Health machinery — gc doctor, gc order history, storage health, and events. This proves metabolism, not semantic acceptance.

When layers disagree, trust the more direct observation: pane over roster for a session wedge, bead/run state over prose for workflow completion.

gc status may return a partial no_agents_running snapshot while gc session list --json shows a live Mayor or worker. Treat that as an observability disagreement, not permission to restart. Use session and pane truth for liveness, bead/run state for workflow progress, and Doctor for metabolism. A supervisor with abnormal CPU, a timed-out native stop, or a recurring hook rewrite remains an upstream operational defect; this helper reports it but never kills or patches GC processes.

The caller-owned input bead and the generated workflow root have separate lifecycles. A successful build-basic run may close its workflow root while leaving the input bead open. Likewise, push=false and open_pr=false produce a successful no-op publish while the approved commit remains in its source anchor worktree. Neither state is semantic completion by itself.

Boundaries

• GC quests, runs, attempts, stalls, cancellations, and internal close state stay in GC. They never become AgentOps Plan, Candidate, RPI, or verdict state.
• A GC close or completed run is not AgentOps completion. Only a fresh Validate context issues the semantic result or, when requested, persists verdict.v2.
• This skill performs no automatic selection, retry, semantic validation, Git, integration, closure, release, or delivery.
• Everything outside the operator lane above belongs to the Mayor or the reconciler.