Setup: the resolution pass

Setup happens once in the life of a repo, and everything downstream depends on it being right. So it is the one place agentsmyth is strict to the point of stubbornness. A lifecycle run can record a skipped check as risk and move on. Setup cannot. Every check passes, or setup does not finish.

It is also not a from-scratch interview. agentsmyth init already did the mechanical half before this skill ever runs — it writes config stubs with real structure, a pending-setup.yaml listing every open item with a question and an inspection hint, and the empty artifacts/learnings tree. This phase's job is a resolution pass: close out what init could not fill in mechanically.

Phase 1: Inspect

The agent reads what init already scaffolded — the config stubs, pending-setup.yaml, and, for Cursor or non-macOS Copilot, an adapter already placed — to confirm and orient around a real starting point. This is not a blank slate: it summarizes what is already there and flags gaps, rather than pretending to discover the repo fresh.

Phase 2: Pending setup resolution

For every open item in pending-setup.yaml, the agent tries inspection first — package.json scripts, CI workflow files, a Makefile, the README — and resolves anything determinable without asking. Only what's left after that becomes a question, and even then it surfaces in small batches, two to four at a time, never a thirty-item wall of text.

Not knowing an answer is allowed. Say so, and the item stays a marked <USER-TODO> rather than a guess. A guessed config is worse than an admitted gap — and the only values init is ever allowed to finalize on its own are genuinely deterministic ones, like a git-inferred default branch. Everything judgment-based reaches you as an open item here, never as a silent guess upstream.

Phase 3: Write configs

The agent fills in whatever is still <USER-TODO> in the five YAML configs under workflow/config/ — which already exist with real structure, so nothing here is overwritten wholesale — plus a repo-mental-map.md that captures the orientation any future agent needs.

Config	Captures
domain.yaml	Domain, stack, terminology
repo-profile.yaml	Repo shape, primary language, single vs mono vs poly
source-of-truth.yaml	Authoritative sources for requirements and decisions
verification.yaml	Test strategy, coverage expectations, CI commands
release.yaml	Release process, environments, deploy targets

agent-behavior.yaml is special: it lives in the shared definitions tree, identical for every repo. Setup does not write it and neither do you. It is the constitution the other five configs operate under.

Phase 4: Verify (the hard stop)

The agent runs the setup validators. Both must exit clean:

node .agentsmyth/validators/check-setup-complete.mjs
node .agentsmyth/validators/check-config.mjs

If either fails, the agent reads the error, fixes the root cause, and re-runs. It does not proceed. Pending items you explicitly left unknown surface as warnings, not failures, and the agent will not invent values to clear them. This asymmetry is what makes the whole system trustworthy: setup is load-bearing, so setup is uncompromising.

Phase 5: Copy and clean up

• Before placing anything per-repo, it checks whether your tool's global gate is already active. If it is, the per-repo adapter is skipped — writing one would be pure duplication. Cursor and non-macOS Copilot are the two exceptions, since no global mechanism reaches them; init already placed those adapters mechanically before this phase starts.
• Using Codex? No existing AGENTS.md? It writes one. Already have one? It appends the agentsmyth section under its own heading and never overwrites yours.
• It writes only your repo-specific files — config, an empty artifacts tree, and learnings — then deletes .agentsmyth/.

Mandatory lifecycle gate, already installed

init installed a mandatory pre-commit hook before this skill ever ran — there is no opt-in question to ask and nothing left to do here. It blocks commits where the upstream lifecycle artifact isn't ready, for example a Build without an approved Plan. The only bypass is git commit --no-verify.