Prax Shift

Prax Shift for Claude

Use Shift as one Prax operating mode. Prax owns durable state, verification, approval boundaries, scheduling, and evidence; Claude is a replaceable worker.

Map the user's intent

• For start or handoff, require a bounded goal, verifier, workspace, and budget.
• For test-only handoff, use the one-shot verification path below; planning or integration work alone does not authorize test execution.
• For status, use prax shift status --run-id <id> to inspect saved evidence in .prax/harness-runs/<id>/, without starting work or claiming fresh verification.
• For continuing coding work, resume the frozen contract with the same run ID. One-shot verification cannot resume.
• For pause or stop, persist a pause request and preserve evidence. Remove a schedule only when explicitly requested.
• Create a recurring schedule only when explicitly requested.

Operating contract

• Keep intent, irreversible decisions, production actions, and scope changes HITL.
• Execute AFK only inside the requested workspace and budget.
• Require an independent verifier for coding work. Without one, report the missing acceptance criterion and do not start a coding worker.
• Keep Claude at dontAsk: operations that still require approval are denied. This is not an OS sandbox. Do not bypass permissions to keep AFK work going; missing narrowly preauthorized capabilities require a human decision.
• Never auto-push, auto-merge, deploy, spend money, or widen permissions.
• Treat HARNESS-ERROR as an environment failure, not a code defect.

Coding: prepare and run

Prepare the files for the user after inspecting existing configuration. Do not overwrite another task or unrelated work. In .prax/harness.json, use schemaVersion: 1, worker: "claude", and relevant existing policy_files (or []); optional model is frozen too. Preserve an existing worker choice unless the user asks to change it.

Create .prax/task.json with schemaVersion: 1, a unique id, the agreed goal, and kind: "code-check". Declare repositories with workspace-relative path, the actual current branch, and narrow relative scope arrays. Declare verifier with trusted argv, workspace-relative cwd, and timeout_seconds; use explicit pytest test paths. Optional control_files binds additional existing scripts/fixtures using workspace-relative paths. Keep acceptance outside editable scope. Set budget with max_iterations, wall_seconds, stuck_after; default conservatively to 3, 600, 2 when unspecified and disclose these limits.

Use prax or the active environment's python -m prax. Plan validates without starting tests or a worker:

prax shift plan --task .prax/task.json
prax shift run --task .prax/task.json

Continue it:

prax shift status --run-id <id>
prax shift pause --run-id <id>
prax shift resume --run-id <id>

Pause requests supervisor shutdown; inspect status to confirm it stopped. Resume checks frozen controls and source identity and retains the total budget. Do not delete evidence, change acceptance, or rotate task IDs to bypass a pause, identity mismatch, or exhausted budget. Escalate for a new task if needed.

Schedule a recurring Shift:

prax cron add \
  --name "<job-name>" \
  --schedule "<five-field cron>" \
  --run-mode shift \
  --task .prax/task.json
prax cron install

The scheduler replays prax shift run --task .prax/task.json --resume-existing; it cannot unpause or renew a budget. Do not create a schedule unless explicitly requested. Follow host scheduling instructions and avoid duplicate schedulers. Legacy goal/feature commands do not provide this guarded task contract.