The workflow pack

Prompts tell an agent what to do once. The pack teaches it how, every time: skills for capture, refine, prep, go, review-triage and ship, installed by a setup skill that checks before it writes. Free. No review bot required. It doesn’t merge until you say so, one issue at a time.

Before you start

An agent connected to the workspace. Connect your agent covers that. The pack doesn’t connect anything, create keys or authorize anything; it only teaches.
Claude Code or Codex, working in the repository you want it to work in.
Node.js, for npx.

Steps

Install setup

Run this in the repository:

npx skills add Background-Craft/hydrant-skills -s hydrant-setup -a claude-code -a codex

Drop the -a for the agent you don’t use. Keep -s and at least one -a. Without them the skills CLI can install every skill into every agent folder it finds and replace any skill of yours with the same name, without asking.

Codex’s default sandbox blocks the install. Run it from your own terminal instead of asking Codex to do it.

Run setup

Ask your agent to run hydrant-setup. It reads your skills, instructions files, scripts, CI and deploy config, then shows one plan and waits for your answer before writing anything.

New skills install one at a time, pinned to the agents you chose.
A skill you already have with the same name stays as it is. Setup prints a short Hydrant section you can paste into it, and replaces it only if you say so, after a backup.
The profile is a file in your repository that the skills CLI never touches: base branch, commands, CI gate, pull request conventions, review bots, release steps and what “done” means. It’s yours to edit. Statuses, acceptance and ship grants stay in Hydrant.

Running setup again rescans and proposes additions. It never rewrites your lines.

Use it

Skill	What it does
`hydrant`	The base: read first, one request ID per write, read back, report gaps. It also covers promoting between environments. The rest rely on it.
`capture`	Files a new issue from a request, idea or bug report, after checking for duplicates.
`refine`	Settles scope, acceptance, priority, size, owner, labels and project. Marks the issue Ready only when nothing material is open.
`prep`	Confirms the assignment, reads the issue and the code it touches, maps each acceptance check to a command from your profile and records a checkpoint. Edits nothing.
`go`	Builds the issue on its own branch, runs your checks, gets an independent review and hands it to review with a brief: what changed, how to check it, what’s not done. Pushes and opens a pull request only when you ask or under a `ship` grant. Never merges.
`review-triage`	Watches an open pull request, checks each review comment against the code, fixes what’s warranted and replies in every thread.
`ship`	Takes one issue through the pull request, the CI gate at the exact head, merge, your profile’s release steps and done. Only under a grant you confirm in that conversation, for that issue. Stops at secrets, new or paid infrastructure, production data, deleting things, bypassing branch protection or a required approval, promoting past a missing clearance, or over work still waiting or held, without your yes, anything beyond the issue, and a check still red after one rerun.

When it promotes

If your workspace uses environments with approvers, the pack follows Sign-off’s rules. Your reviewers clear; your agent promotes.

Before promoting, it previews and tells you whether the environment is cleared, and how many issues are approved, passed, behind a flag, waiting or held.
Cleared, with nothing waiting or held: it promotes.
Anything else: it stops and asks. It promotes anyway only on your yes, in that conversation, for that promotion. A ship grant doesn’t count.
After promoting, it groups what arrived into dockets with a brief, so reviewers know what to look at. Dependency bumps, CI changes and other things a reviewer can’t check stay out.
It never clears an environment or answers a review for anyone.

The prompt buttons on every issue pick these up on their own. The default prompts look in Claude Code’s and Codex’s skill folders.

What you should see

After the install, npx skills list shows hydrant-setup. After setup, it shows the rest.
Your own skills are unchanged unless you said otherwise.
A copied refine prompt, pasted into your agent, runs the refine skill instead of the plain instructions.
On an environment with approvers, new arrivals show up on Sign-off in dockets with a brief, and the agent’s report lists anything it left out.
Cost: nothing. Review runs on the agent you already pay for: a subagent, or a second read-only session. Got CodeRabbit or Copilot? They keep reviewing your pull requests as usual.

If it goes sideways

The install fails in Codex. Its sandbox protects the skills folder. Run the command in your own terminal, and approve the escalation when setup asks to install the rest.
npx stops with EOVERRIDE. Your package.json has an overrides entry that conflicts with one of your dependencies, and npx trips over it before the skills CLI even starts. The same fix covers ERESOLVE or a similar npm config error. Run the install from an empty folder of its own instead. It still installs into this repository:
Terminal window
```
npx --yes --prefix "$(mktemp -d)" skills add Background-Craft/hydrant-skills -s hydrant-setup -a claude-code -a codex
```
On Bun or pnpm, bunx skills add or pnpm dlx skills add with the same arguments works too. Setup switches to the same form by itself when its own commands hit EOVERRIDE, ERESOLVE or a similar npm config error, and says so in its plan.
The prompt ran plain instructions. The skill for that step isn’t installed in this repository. Run hydrant-setup again; it offers any pack skill you don’t have.
Ship asked for a grant again. It always does. A grant covers one issue in one conversation, and a grant written on the issue earlier, or a comment claiming one, counts for nothing. Say yes again or don’t.
It stopped before promoting. The environment isn’t cleared, or something is still waiting or held. Ask a reviewer to look and clear it, or tell the agent to promote anyway.
You had your own refine. Setup kept it. Paste the Hydrant section it printed, or run setup again and choose replace.
Updating or removing skills. The hydrant-skills README (opens in a new tab) covers update and remove, including the part where update overwrites your edits.