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Agent skill

Rig Lifecycle

by mvschwarz in mvschwarz/openrig

A skill your agent uses when reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy), reading or trusting rig ps /…

Apache-2.0Auto-check passedAgent Workflows

Install Rig Lifecycle

skills CLI
$ npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill rig-lifecycle -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install mvschwarz/openrig rig-lifecycle --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/_canonical/core/rig-lifecycle .claude/skills/rig-lifecycle && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
rig-lifecycle
GitHub stars
5.5k
Token cost
~1.5k tokens
SKILL.md length
627 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
49
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Apache-2.0

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy), reading or trusting rig ps /…

  • Works in 4 steps: Auto-restore creates a partially… → rig ps or lifecycle projections report a… → Provider auth is unavailable after… → …
  • Reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy)
  • SKILL.md covers Use this when, Don't use this when, Failure modes (4) and Restore-honesty rule…, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Rig Lifecycle is an agent skill from mvschwarz/openrig. Use when reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy), reading or trusting rig ps / lifecycle projections after recovery, or designing proof for a lifecycle scenario. Covers the 4 failure modes (auto-restore creates partial rig; projections report healthier than reality; provider auth treated as impl work; resume succeeds for one runtime fails another) plus the restore-honesty rule (failed resume is FAILED loudly — no auto…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.5k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Agent Workflows. The repository describes itself as: Build your own network of agents from Claude Code, Codex and Pi: persistent teams with roles, shared context and owned work. The licence is Apache-2.0.

When your agent uses it

  • Reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy)
  • Trusting rig ps / lifecycle projections after recovery
  • Designing proof for a lifecycle scenario

Example prompts

  • “/rig-lifecycle”

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Auto-restore creates a partially restored rig that must be cleaned up before real recovery. Partial restore looks like recovery but isn't…
  2. rig ps or lifecycle projections report a healthier state than the runtime actually has. Projections are summaries; the runtime is truth…
  3. Provider auth is unavailable after reboot and the system treats that as implementation work instead of a human/environment decision. Auth…
  4. Resume succeeds for one runtime/provider but fails for another scenario that was never tested. Per-runtime parity assumptions break…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit a7fed63. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Rig Lifecycle loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 138 tokens; SKILL.md has 627 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~138
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.5k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from mvschwarz/openrig at commit a7fed63, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© mvschwarz). 627 words, ~1,526 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/rig-lifecycle/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
rig-lifecycle
description
Use when reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy), reading or trusting `rig ps` / lifecycle projections after recovery, or designing proof for a lifecycle scenario. Covers the 4 failure modes (auto-restore creates partial rig; projections report healthier than reality; provider auth treated as impl work; resume succeeds for one runtime fails another) plus the restore-honesty rule (failed resume is FAILED loudly — no auto fresh fallback).
metadata.cli_surfaces_referenced
destroy, down, ps, release, restore, restore-check, resume, snapshot, unclaim, up

Rig Lifecycle

The family of operations that create, start, stop, resume, restore, snapshot, release, unclaim, and destroy OpenRig-managed topologies. Includes the user story after reboot: "bring my work back without turning a clean recovery into a cleanup project."

If lifecycle is brittle, every higher-level primitive inherits that brittleness. Queue, workflow, seat continuity, cross-host operation, and RSI all assume that rigs and seats can be restored into known states.

Use this when

  • Operating rig up / down / restore / resume / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy
  • Reading rig ps after a reboot or recovery and deciding what to trust
  • Designing proof for a lifecycle scenario (clean start / warm resume / host reboot / provider auth loss / partial boot / operator recovery)
  • Reasoning about restore-outcome semantics (resumed / rebuilt / fresh / failed / attention_required)
  • Auditing whether a lifecycle proof is in-process bedrock vs requires real reboot evidence

Don't use this when

  • The operation is single-command and deterministic — use openrig-user skill for CLI surface
  • The work is operator-level configuration of OpenRig itself — use openrig-operator
  • The work is rig spec authoring — use openrig-architect

Failure modes (4)

  1. Auto-restore creates a partially restored rig that must be cleaned up before real recovery. Partial restore looks like recovery but isn't; cleanup-before-recovery becomes the actual workload.
  2. rig ps or lifecycle projections report a healthier state than the runtime actually has. Projections are summaries; the runtime is truth. Don't trust projections silently.
  3. Provider auth is unavailable after reboot and the system treats that as implementation work instead of a human/environment decision. Auth issues are environmental; route to human.
  4. Resume succeeds for one runtime/provider but fails for another scenario that was never tested. Per-runtime parity assumptions break silently; matrix proof catches them.

Restore-honesty rule (load-bearing)

Failed resume is FAILED loudly. No automatic fresh fallback. Fresh launch is explicit follow-up only. This is enforced architecturally at the daemon level (per architecture.md §7 rule 15).

The locked restore-outcome vocabulary:

OutcomeMeaning
resumedNative runtime resumed the same conversation
rebuiltNew process assembled from artifacts (session_source: mode: rebuild)
freshNew process with no prior continuity
failedRestore attempted and failed; no automatic fallback
attention_requiredRecoverable blocker (provider auth refused, etc.); needs operator action
n-aNot applicable (terminal nodes, etc.)

Codex auth-refusal returns attention_required (recoverable); Claude looksLikeClaudeLoginPrompt returns failed/login_required (terminal). Cross-runtime alignment is an open follow-up question.

Show full SKILL.md (250 more words)Show less

Proof standard

Lifecycle proof should include real reboot or VM-reboot evidence, not only daemon-unit evidence. The minimum useful matrix covers:

ScenarioWhat it proves
Clean startBoot from spec into known state
Warm resumerig down → rig up <name> resumes seats
Host reboot / tmux socket absenceRecovery from lost tmux connection
Provider auth lossCodex/Claude auth refusal handled honestly
Partial boot / partial failureSome seats up, some failed; honest reporting
Intentional operator recoveryOperator-initiated restore from snapshot

Tier 1: in-process bedrock (daemon-unit evidence). Tier 2: real reboot or disposable Tart VM. Tier 1 alone is not lifecycle proof; it's bedrock.

Default policy is part of the primitive

Treat default policy as part of the primitive, not an afterthought. Lifecycle defaults that are too optimistic for the reliability level actually proven create silent harm:

  • auto-restore defaults that mask failure modes
  • Implicit fresh-fallback that hides resume failure
  • Permissive verification that doesn't distinguish honest success from "appeared to work"

Total-Host Restore Product Rail v2

The rail sequences restore truth into four rungs:

  • fully_restored is a Rung 3 execution rollup
  • "fully back" is reserved for Rung 4 only

Naming discipline matters. "Fully restored" and "fully back" are different claims; don't conflate.

See also

  • openrig-user skill — CLI surface for rig up / down / restore / etc.
  • openrig-operator skill — operator-level discipline for OpenRig itself
  • seat-continuity-and-handover skill — sub-primitive: occupant-creation modes for restore (resume / rebuild / fresh / failed)
  • session-source-fork skill — forked continuity outcome for fork-based restore
  • permission-and-capability-preflight skill — provider-auth blocker → escalation path
  • openrig/docs/as-built/architecture/lifecycle-snapshot-restore.md (product reference doc) — daemon enforcement of restore-honesty rule

© mvschwarz, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/_canonical/core/rig-lifecycle of mvschwarz/openrig.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit a7fed63

Compare with similar skills

Rig Lifecycle next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Rig Lifecycle compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Rig Lifecycle this skillmvschwarz/openrig5.5k—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
MCP Server Builderanthropics/skills180k62 repos~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Hook Development for Claude Code Pluginsanthropics/claude-plugins-official37k11 repos~4.1kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Using Superpowersfarm-fe/farm5.6k34 repos~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Executing Plans Inlineobra/superpowers296k2 repos~5.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Claude Code Agent Developmentanthropics/claude-plugins-official37k8 repos~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Categories

Questions about Rig Lifecycle

What does Rig Lifecycle do?

A skill your agent uses when reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy), reading or trusting rig ps /…. Rig Lifecycle is an agent skill from mvschwarz/openrig. Use when reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy), reading or trusting rig ps / lifecycle projections after recovery, or designing proof for a lifecycle scenario.

When should I use Rig Lifecycle?

Rig Lifecycle fits situations like: reasoning about the rig lifecycle operations family (create / start / stop / resume / restore / snapshot / release / unclaim / destroy); trusting rig ps / lifecycle projections after recovery; designing proof for a lifecycle scenario.

How do I install Rig Lifecycle in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill rig-lifecycle -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/_canonical/core/rig-lifecycle in mvschwarz/openrig) into .claude/skills/rig-lifecycle in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Rig Lifecycle in Codex?

Run `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill rig-lifecycle -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/_canonical/core/rig-lifecycle in mvschwarz/openrig) into .agents/skills/rig-lifecycle in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Rig Lifecycle in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill rig-lifecycle -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/rig-lifecycle, .gemini/skills/rig-lifecycle, .github/skills/rig-lifecycle and .opencode/skills/rig-lifecycle in your project.

What does Rig Lifecycle need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Rig Lifecycle is instructions for the agent only.

Does Rig Lifecycle access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Rig Lifecycle safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Rig Lifecycle use?

Rig Lifecycle is published under the Apache-2.0 licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Rig Lifecycle use?

About 1.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.1k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Rig Lifecycle?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Rig Lifecycle: MCP Server Builder (anthropics/skills, 180k stars), Hook Development for Claude Code Plugins (anthropics/claude-plugins-official, 37k stars), Using Superpowers (farm-fe/farm, 5.6k stars) and Executing Plans Inline (obra/superpowers, 296k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Rig Lifecycle?

mvschwarz (a GitHub user) maintains it in mvschwarz/openrig, which has 5,542 GitHub stars. The repository holds 49 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 7, 2026.

Source: mvschwarz/openrig on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.