doctor

---

name: doctor description: Read-only diagnosis of the workspace, rules, markers, lease, watchman and deadline, with classified next actions. license: MIT

Diagnose the host-opened project without changing anything. Doctor is deeper than status: it explains what Nightshift resolved and which failures that implies. It does not arm, stop, revive, rewrite, or delete.

The four state files and what each holds are in $NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/nightshift/references/shift/state-map.md. Report these as different categories; do not merge or move them.

Resolve the installed plugin root to an absolute $NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT — ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} on Claude Code, $PLUGIN_ROOT on Codex when set, otherwise the absolute path this skill was attached from (skills/doctor/SKILL.md). Run every command below through "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" — native Windows: & "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT\runtime\windows\ns.ps1" in the PowerShell tool, same verbs — which resolves the host and the workspace; ns help lists the verbs, and ns bind prints the six resolved facts (TASK_ROOT, NIGHTSHIFT_WORKSPACE, NS, NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT, HOST, SOURCE); $NS below is that NS. Never a bare relative path: the working directory persists between calls. Each $NS/... path below is where the current layout keeps that file; ns path <key> prints where this workspace keeps it, and ns path --list names every key.

1. Run the inspector

"$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" doctor

Print its report verbatim. Do not summarise away Facts, Warnings, or Actions, and do not re-derive anything it already resolved: the script uses the same workspace, work-mode, work-target, policy and ownership libraries as the hooks, and both implementations print the same lines.

The report answers, in its own words: where the workspace is and whether .nightshift-link is valid; the schema version and whether it is current, legacy, malformed, or newer than this plugin; work mode and work target; the punch-list and staged-work counts; each parking-lot or snag-log paragraph Archive can never file, by file and line; markers, session, process lease and watchman liveness; the deadline and whether it disagrees with the shift policy; an interrupted provisioning transaction; every rules.json knob it needs and the three native question-tool entries; a resolved policy block naming every effective setting with its source (built-in, rules, defaults, one-shift or exact-plan) and expiry (shift, permanent or -); and a preflight fact naming which items need an elevation category the resolved policy does not grant.

Staged work is reported, never offered, while the punch list has open items. Doctor suggests promoting a draft or a parked Hunt order only when no - [ ] remains under ## Items and no shift is armed — the same precedence Start applies. With open work, say what is staged and say plainly that Start works the current list; do not read a count as an invitation to widen the approved scope, and never promote anything from this read-only skill.

The work mode fact is repository or artifact. When $NS/run/work-mode is missing and Setup would propose artifact, Doctor warns work mode is unset; Setup would propose artifact and offers persist the proposed artifact mode with Setup; Doctor does not write work-mode. When work-mode is unreadable it warns work mode is malformed; treating the site as unusable until Setup rewrites it, and when the target cannot be resolved it warns work target could not be resolved; treating workspace as the code root. When the record is missing the resolver takes the workspace or its single immediate child repository. Skip a symlink or reparse child; it is not a nested checkout.

In artifact mode the report also carries artifact receipts N for files under $NS/receipts/, and latest artifact receipt with the filename only of the most recently written receipt (no directory path). When receipts are enabled it reports completion record per-item receipt and, if ticked items have no model text, warns N ticked items have no receipt text; each item completes through its receipt file. Disabled receipts are a fact only: completion record none; the owner disabled receipts. When the path exists but is not a real directory, it warns artifact receipts path is not a usable directory and offers to replace it so receipts can land; it does not also warn empty ticks for that path. Copies from Archive live in each shift's folder under the archive root, $NS/archive/<YYYY-MM-DD>/receipts/ by default, and do not replace the live files Doctor counts. Missing or empty receipts create no dated receipts folder.

Every Warning is a real finding — relay it, do not soften it. A path that is not a usable file is a planted symlink where a marker should be, not an empty night; a malformed work mode is not a working site; a failed clock-out is not a finished shift. Say what each one means for the owner and, when the report offers a [confirm] action for it, name that action.

Doctor never writes the policy file, never runs the project's own tooling, and never prints credentials, raw evidence, rule values, or the output of a command it did not run.

2. Classify actions — do not execute them

The report tags every suggestion:

• [safe] — mechanical leftover with no live session (for example a stale watchman pid file whose process is already gone). Still do not apply it because Doctor was invoked; offer it.
• [confirm] — owner decision (broken link, missing setup, leftover STOP while they still want the night). During an unattended active shift ($NS/run/.shift-armed and open boxes), report that the recommendation should be parked with the default "leave in place until morning", but do not write the parking lot or ask — the Doctor invocation remains byte-identical.
• [blocked] — Nightshift cannot fix this here (non-resumable Codex id, malformed process lease, missing host binary, unverified wedge). Say so. Never guess a session id or print/edit a lease capability. For a stuck conversation or a fenced recorded session, name "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" stop-shift — that pauses immediately without waiting for a Stop event. Do not run it from Doctor.

When the report says a terminal clock-out failed without releasing the shift, say whether the recorded conversation can operate or whether a recovery worker still holds the lease; never tell the owner to reopen a conversation that would stay blocked.

Invoking Doctor alone must leave the tree byte-identical. Never perform a repair merely because Doctor was invoked.

When cross-host continuity is relevant, summarize stand-down and revival from $NS/run/shift-log.md (no secrets), and run continuity-handoff.sh fence-check only when a duplicate worker or unfenced prior owner is suspected.

3. After the report

Offer the classified repairs after the report. If the owner explicitly asks to apply a [safe] leftover while no shift is armed, they are no longer in Doctor — follow stop/start/setup as those skills specify. Until that explicit ask, change nothing. During an unattended shift, the offer is informational only: continue the active work without asking or writing state.

Two repairs the report names are separate owner actions, never Doctor's own:

• The move into the current layout. On a workspace at an older state-version, or one holding a state file at an earlier path, the [confirm] action names each file with its old and new path and says that nothing is deleted; it is [blocked] while a shift is armed, a watchman is alive or a lock is held. Relay it as printed. The owner previews it with "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" migrate-state and makes it by running that again with --apply. A future version is [blocked]: never downgrade a marker.
• A local rule profile. Doctor may list the shipped examples with "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" apply-profile --list and preview one with --profile <name> --mode fill (or --mode replace). Preview is the default; only --apply writes, and Invoking Doctor never writes rules.json.

A senior may run the read-only project inventory after the report: "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" inventory. It prints one table per workspace package — package manager and lockfile, the scripts declared for test, lint, typecheck, build and format, the config files present, and each named tool as declared, runnable or absent. Those three words are the whole verdict; the report never calls a project misconfigured. It writes and caches nothing, and Doctor never runs it — offer it, the way every other action here is offered.

If the owner then explicitly asks to Export support bundle, they are no longer in Doctor. Run "$NIGHTSHIFT_PLUGIN_ROOT/runtime/ns" export-support. Print its path, included sections, and omitted categories. Do not upload, attach, transmit, or open the file. Invoking Doctor alone must not create $NS/support/.