Stop babysitting agents.
Give them shared understanding.
The Nightmanager Loop clarifies intent, turns it into local specs and vertical TODOs, then delegates one lean batch for AFK implementation. You come back to validated work — and, when possible, a PR ready for human review.
The Nightmanager Loop
From vague intent to a reviewable PR
Five stages, each leaving a durable local artifact behind — so nothing lives only in a chat window.
Grill the intent
grill-me interrogates a feature, bug, or plan one question at a time until hidden requirements and trade-offs surface. Too big for one session? wayfinder charts a map of investigation tickets first.
Synthesise the spec
to-spec turns the clarified conversation into a concrete local spec — goals, acceptance criteria, tests, and risks — with no second interview.
Slice into tickets
to-tickets breaks the spec into small, vertical local TODOs, each declaring its blocking edges and safe for one focused implementation pass.
Promote reviewed work
to-ready activates reviewed specs, flips associated draft TODOs to ready, and makes one clean promotion commit.
Implement — attended or AFK
/nightmanager delegates the batch through subagents; /implement works one ticket in the foreground. Both draw the same queue and end in a two-axis /code-review.
Subagents
Focused roles inside the loop
Once the spec is clear, execution is delegated to narrow subagents — so the main session keeps its context.
Codebase Search
Maps the codebase for a ready slice so implementation starts from shared context instead of guesswork.
Reasoning & Debugging
Analyzes ambiguity, risks, and trade-offs when the slice needs deeper reasoning before code changes.
OSS Research
Reads upstream source, tests, and examples for a dependency and cites commit-pinned GitHub permalinks — primary-source evidence, not write-ups.
Implementation
Makes the smallest viable change for one ready TODO and reports concrete verification evidence.
Orchestration
Coordinates finder, oracle, librarian, and worker with handoff artifacts so each step stays auditable.
Supporting skills
Pulled in when a ticket needs them
These feed the loop rather than drive it — reach for them mid-flow, not as a stage of their own.
research
Dispatches the librarian to investigate a question against primary sources and lands the findings as a cited Markdown note under docs/research/ — so the main session keeps working while it reads.
tdd
The red → green reference: what a good test is, where seams go, and the anti-patterns to avoid. Consulted by /implement and the night-shift worker rather than run on its own.
Reviewable AFK implementation
Nightmanager works from local specs and ready TODOs with lean preload context: shared prompts, TODOs, and the active spec/template. Humans review PRs — Nightmanager never merges or deploys on its own.
Learn how the night shift works