skills: chat, worktree and herdr-inject on MCP tools (RT-326)

[m4ttheweric]

Summary

RT-326 wave 3: the chat and rt skills call the mattstack MCP tools instead of shelling out.

• rt:chat: every chat verb goes through a chat_* tool (sign-in, sign-out, rooms, read, mark, who, buddies, join, leave, away, back, archive, invite, post, dm, ack, claim, release). chat_sign_in and chat_join pass cwd, because the server's own directory is fixed at session start. Pane discovery uses rt_verb (pane list, pane peek). The only CLI chat forms left are the /clear fallback: after /clear the tools still act as the pre-clear session, so that session uses Bash rt chat.
• rt:worktree: provision and dispose use worktree_provision and worktree_dispose, and list and await-ready use rt_verb (await-ready passes the tree's cwd). EnterWorktree name-mode is still the preferred way to start.
• rt:herdr-inject: panes are found through rt_verb, and every rt pane send form stays on Bash.
• chat plugin (marketplace/plugins/chat/, 0.3.0 to 0.4.0): join, sign-in, sign-out and away use the same tools, and the README says the mattstack plugin is required. The shell hooks are unchanged. The chat plugin is edited at its source here; scripts/release/marketplace.sh publishes it to mattstack-marketplace at the next release.

Verification

• RED/GREEN per writing-skills. Fresh agents described the calls they would make and executed nothing:
  • Before the edits, they used Bash for rt chat rooms, rt chat sign-in, rt pane list, rt worktree await-ready/list/dispose and all of join. One also called chat_sign_in without cwd.
  • After the edits, all eight scenarios used the tools. The only Bash rt calls left are the kept ones: rt pane send, rt worktree hook status, and the /clear fallback.
• bun cli.ts skills check --pack-dir <root> --strict: no hits in the touched skills (the 3 hits in skills/rt-release are there on main too); the chat plugin is clean.
• The chat plugin's hook tests (test-session-end.sh, test-session-start.sh) pass.
• bash scripts/repo-purity.sh: ok.
• Each task had its own review, and an Opus review covered the whole branch. Every finding is fixed except the Minors that review marked fine to leave.

Notes

• This pane's herd sign-in never wrote a chat session file, so chat_dm refused until rt chat sign-in was run in Bash once. Fixed by rt#504.
• Outside this PR, and stale: AGENTS.md's rt chat section (tail, Monitor, heredoc), apps/chat/ARCHITECTURE.md (heredoc posting, old checkout path), and the viewer path in packages/rt-client/README.md.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Updated chat guides to use chat tools for sign-in, room access, reading and posting messages, away status, and sign-out. They clarify room selection and when to use command-line alternatives after a session is cleared.
  • Expanded coordination guidance for message reading limits, delivery acknowledgments, participant invitations, and viewer links.
  • Revised pane and worktree instructions, including tool usage, readiness checks, and handling disposal requests for dirty or unpushed worktrees.

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📒 Files selected for processing (6)

• marketplace/plugins/chat/README.md
• marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/away/SKILL.md
• marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/join/SKILL.md
• skills/rt-chat/SKILL.md
• skills/rt-herdr-inject/SKILL.md
• skills/rt-worktree/SKILL.md

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The chat plugin and skill guides now describe MCP chat tools as the primary interface, with Bash fallbacks for specified session conditions. The herdr and worktree skill guides also document updated tool-based workflows.

Changes

Chat tool guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Chat tool setup and entry marketplace/plugins/chat/.claude-plugin/plugin.json, marketplace/plugins/chat/README.md, skills/rt-chat/SKILL.md	The plugin version changes to 0.4.0. The README and main chat guide document the MCP tool interface, installation requirement, sign-in inputs, and session information.
Chat session and room workflows marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/*/SKILL.md	The away, join, sign-in, and sign-out guides use chat tool calls and describe Bash fallbacks for session replacement. The join guide distinguishes the no-signed-in-session response from a chat_rooms failure after sign-in.
Chat messaging and coordination skills/rt-chat/SKILL.md	The guide documents tool-based reading, posting, direct messages, acknowledgments, claims, recruiting, and coordination, including relevant inputs and results.

Pane discovery guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Pane lookup skills/rt-herdr-inject/SKILL.md	Pane discovery now uses rt_verb with pane list and describes its JSON output. The subsequent send command remains in Bash.

Worktree tool guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Worktree lifecycle and readiness skills/rt-worktree/SKILL.md	The guide documents worktree_provision and worktree_dispose, worktree entry modes, and using rt_verb with the tree path as cwd for readiness checks.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~12 minutes

Change: Other

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to b1acc

The updated tool guidance appears ready to merge after normal checks; no actionable issue remains established.

Architecture Summary

Architecture risk: 🔵 Low · up to b1acc

The change affects 2 systems.

Changed systems: marketplace, skills

Architecture concerns
No architecture-level concerns identified.

Review details

Systems and components

• observed — marketplace (service) was modified; 6 changed files map to changed impact.
• observed — skills (service) was modified; 3 changed files map to changed impact.

Before / after behavior

• observed — Modified behavior in marketplace/plugins/chat/.claude-plugin/plugin.json: The plugin version is updated from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0.
• observed — Modified behavior in marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/sign-in/SKILL.md: The instructions replace the CLI sign-in command and flags with chat_sign_in, require the checkout’s absolute cwd, and document its optional arguments and returned information. They add a Bash CLI fallback when the tool refuses because the session was replaced by /clear.
• observed — Modified behavior in marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/sign-out/SKILL.md: The instructions replace the Bash command as the default sign-out step with chat_sign_out {} and add a warning that after /clear it can report success while using the pre-clear session, recommending the Bash command in that case.
• observed — Modified behavior in marketplace/plugins/chat/README.md: The Skills section replaces rt chat command instructions with chat_* tool calls: sign-in takes {cwd, status?, noRoom?, room?}, join invokes /chat:join <room> and reads the seed using {room, last}, sign-out takes {} and retains room memberships, and away/back take {text}/{}.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: updating the chat, worktree, and herdr-inject skills to use MCP tools.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 0…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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Inline comments:
In @marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/join/SKILL.md:
- Around line 26-28: Update the `/clear` fallback in the join procedure so that
when step 2 uses `rt chat sign-in` and `rt chat join`, steps 3 and 4 also use
`rt chat read <room> --last 10` and `rt chat post` via Bash instead of
`chat_read` and `chat_post`.

In @skills/rt-chat/SKILL.md:
- Around line 116-119: Update the `chat_read {since: ...}` guidance to state
that reads are limited to 20 messages by default and may not show the entire
requested window. Explain how to request a higher limit, using the supported
read-operation parameter, so agents can retrieve more messages.

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Configuration used: defaults

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Run ID: f45147fd-ab12-4c42-aa72-80d5b655c05f

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between e9f21c7 and b7b328a.

📒 Files selected for processing (9)

• marketplace/plugins/chat/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
• marketplace/plugins/chat/README.md
• marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/away/SKILL.md
• marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/join/SKILL.md
• marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/sign-in/SKILL.md
• marketplace/plugins/chat/skills/sign-out/SKILL.md
• skills/rt-chat/SKILL.md
• skills/rt-herdr-inject/SKILL.md
• skills/rt-worktree/SKILL.md

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