setup Skill

setup

The marketplace install is the default. One marketplace add, then one plugin install per skill family, and nothing is written to the repo. setup with no arguments proposes it; the other methods are fallbacks for where a marketplace cannot reach. Walk-through: install.md → Step M0b, which reads any committed floor first. Per-agent reference: docs/setup/marketplace.md.

First — the welcome guide

The setup family runs no shared pre-flight, so this skill checks for its first-run welcome guide itself, before any sub-action, silently. <skill-dir> is the directory holding this SKILL.md, which carries the checker even before config has copied it into its checker_dir. Append :<skill-dir> only when that directory is outside the project's working tree (a marketplace install's plugin cache); when this skill runs from inside the repository — the committed .agents/skills/magpie-setup/ bootstrap — leave it off, so the check never imports code the repository ships:

PYTHONPATH="$HOME/.cache/apache-magpie/preflight[:<skill-dir>]" \
  python3 -P -m setup_preflight.welcome due --skill setup

• {"verdict": "ok"}, or the command did not run at all → say nothing and go on to the sub-action.
• {"verdict": "action", ...} → follow rules.welcome, the same rules a pre-flight welcome finding carries, and run its record command with the PYTHONPATH above.

This is the only check: none of the pre-flight's setup, floor or fingerprint findings run here.

The install paths

Path	What it sets up	Take it when
marketplace (default)	The agent's own plugin mechanism installs the skills, per machine. Nothing in the repo; updates arrive through the agent's plugin update.	The agent has a plugin / extension mechanism — Claude Code, Codex CLI, VS Code + Copilot, Antigravity, Cursor, microsoft/apm. The normal case.
marketplace + an adopted floor	The same per-machine install, plus a committed .apache-magpie.lock recording the project's minimum version and plugin set. Contributors are brought up to it by any skill's pre-flight.	The project wants a floor every contributor meets, without pinning anyone to one version. Written by adopt.
svn-zip / git-tag / git-branch — the pinned snapshot install (fallback)	The gitignored snapshot at <snapshot-dir>, both lock files, gitignored magpie-* symlinks, the overrides scaffold, the post-checkout hook.	Only where a marketplace cannot reach: the agent has no plugin mechanism, the project needs the signed ASF source artefact, or it wants every contributor and CI job pinned to one committed framework version with drift detection.
local	Committed symlinks into the in-repo skills/ source. No fetch, no snapshot.	The Apache Magpie framework checkout itself (see below).

A project can have contributors on either path, but one machine takes only one (Golden rule 10).

The pinned-snapshot machinery — what the snapshot is, the fetch methods, symlink naming, the overrides scaffold — is in snapshot-model.md. A marketplace install needs none of it.

The two lock files

(Pinned-snapshot path only — a marketplace install has no lock files.) The committed <committed-lock> records what the project pins to; the gitignored <local-lock> records what this machine fetched. Drift detection and multi-installer support rest on that split. Trusted external skill sources use their own pair with the same semantics. Formats, fields, and drift rules: locks.md.

Detail files in this directory

The Sub-actions table maps every invocation to the file it loads. Three more are reference files the sub-actions consult: locks.md (lock files and the reconciled: stamp), agents.md (agent-target registry, canonical-plus-relay model), and snapshot-model.md (pinned-snapshot machinery and the five golden rules that bind only there). failure-modes.md is for when something has already gone wrong.

Golden rules

Golden rule 1 — never modify the snapshot. <snapshot-dir> is a gitignored build artefact and read-only to adopters. Every change an adopter wants goes into .apache-magpie-overrides/, where it is committed and survives the next update. Neither this skill nor any framework skill reading overrides ever writes to <snapshot-dir>.

Golden rule 5 — .agents/skills/ is canonical; everything else just relays into it. Whatever layout the project had before, adopt wires the framework the same way: the canonical magpie-* links live in .agents/skills/, and every other active target (.claude, .github, holdouts) gets per-skill relay symlinks back to them (.claude/skills/magpie-<n> → ../../.agents/skills/magpie-<n>). The adopter's own non-magpie- skills in those directories are left alone. See agents.md.

Golden rule 7 — agentic overrides are read at run-time — lookup order and guardrail in overrides.md.

Golden rule 8 — family membership is declared in frontmatter; two families are always installed, the rest are opt-in. Every framework skill declares its family in a family: frontmatter key (e.g. family: repo-health). The sub-actions read that key from the snapshot to build the adopt/update install choice and to wire each family's symlinks. Never infer family from the skill-name prefix — families such as repo-health and contributor-growth span several prefixes. The family vocabulary is validated by skill-and-tool-validator (ALLOWED_FAMILIES) and listed for adopters in README.md → Skill families.

Two families are wired unconditionally on every adopt / update / worktree-init run, without asking: setup (every family: setup skill except the bootstrap setup itself, which is copied per Rule 6) and utilities. Both are read from frontmatter like any other family — do not keep a list here.

Golden rule 10 — marketplace first; the snapshot install is a fallback, not the default. Rules 1–9 govern the pinned-snapshot machinery; this rule decides which path a run takes. Unless the user passed an explicit method:, install proposes the marketplace install, with the exact commands for the agent in front of it. It proposes the snapshot only for one of these reasons, named out loud:

• the agent has no plugin / extension mechanism, or its marketplace install has already failed for this user;
• the project needs the signed ASF source artefact (svn-zip), not a marketplace clone of the repo;
• the project wants one committed pin — every contributor and CI job on one framework version, with drift detection;
• the repo is the framework checkout itself (method:local).

Never lay the snapshot on top of a working marketplace install "to be safe". It loads a second copy of every skill, doubling the always-on token cost, and /magpie-<skill> (snapshot) and /magpie-<family>:<skill> (plugin) then resolve to two different versions of the same skill. Where a repo genuinely needs the pin, the snapshot replaces the marketplace install on that machine — uninstall the plugins first.

Five rules bind only on the pinned-snapshot path — the lock files, drift remediation, .gitignore, copy-versus-symlink, and reloading setup after a self-update (rule 9). They are in snapshot-model.md with the machinery they govern; a marketplace install is not subject to them.

Golden rule 11 — a missing vetted-ops policy never blocks a setup run. A repo that has only installed Magpie has no .apache-magpie-overrides/tools/vetted-ops/config.toml; vetted-ops then reads a maintainer's personal copy (<personal layer>/tools/vetted-ops/config.toml), and with neither a vetted-op call fails with no vetted-ops config at …. During any setup sub-action, report that as n/a in one line and carry on with the remaining steps; never call it a blocker, never stop the run for it, and never write a policy to get past it. The one sanctioned way to a personal policy is config's personal tool configs step, on the user's explicit yes. The exemption is this run's only: every other skill still stops when the dispatcher refuses, and a policy that exists but fails to load is a real error here too.

Sub-actions

The skill dispatches by the first positional argument:

Invocation	Loads	Purpose
setup (no args)	install.md	First-time install. Proposes the marketplace install first; falls back to the snapshot only per Golden rule 10, and only that fallback is main-checkout only. Idempotent — on an already-installed repo it behaves like verify.
setup install	install.md	Same as no-arg — explicit form. Main-checkout only.
setup install method:marketplace	install.md → Step M0b	The default path, named explicitly. Prints the agent's marketplace add + plugin install commands and writes nothing to the repo. Works in a worktree, and in a repo that has adopted nothing.
setup install method:svn-zip|git-tag|git-branch	install.md	The pinned snapshot install — the fallback path. Main-checkout only.
setup config	config.md	Not an install, and not adoption. Configure the installed skills for you, in the personal layer — <git-common-dir>/apache-magpie/ on a repo that has not adopted Magpie (nothing in the working tree), the gitignored .apache-magpie-local/ on one that has. Works on any repo, adopted or not, with nobody's permission. Writes nothing committable and stages nothing.
setup config <skill>	config.md	The same, narrowed to one skill's required configuration.
setup config adversarial-review	config.md	Detect the installed model CLIs and configure them as adversarial reviewers.
setup adopt	adopt.md	Not an install. Commit the repo's recommended default plugin set and scaffold its overrides store, so every contributor arrives with them. Needs an explicit maintainer decision; stages, never commits. Default set is Claude Code only.
setup update	update.md	Move this install to the new version: refresh the snapshot per <committed-lock>, reconcile overrides, refresh symlinks; on a marketplace install, update the plugins. setup-upgrade runs it as its first step, so "upgrade magpie" goes there, not here. Main-checkout only — worktrees pick it up through the symlink worktree-init installs.
setup worktree-init	worktree-init.md	Worktree-only. Symlink the worktree's <snapshot-dir> to the main checkout's so both share one framework state. No fetch, no lock files written; idempotent.
setup verify	verify.md	Read-only health check and drift report. Works in the main checkout and in worktrees.
setup reconcile	reconcile.md	One-time project-wide sweep: checks anchors and requires_config for every configured or overridden skill, proposes fixes one by one, writes the reconciled: stamp. Any install method. Main-checkout only when the stamp goes to the committed lock (adopted); unrestricted when it goes to the local file.
setup skill-sources (aka skill-sources add <id>)	skill-sources.md	Fetch, verify, pin and symlink skills from the trusted sources listed in <project-config>/skill-sources.md. Main-checkout only — worktrees share the source snapshots via worktree-init.
setup override <skill>	overrides.md	Open or scaffold an override file.
setup delegate [<skill>]	delegates.md	Find the project's own skills that overlap Magpie's and, per match and on the user's yes, write a delegate: block so Magpie runs the project's skill inside its workflow. Magpie's wrapper — confirmation gates, scrubs, the privacy gate — stays around it.
setup welcome [family]	welcome.md	Alias for the welcome-guide skill: show a welcome guide, or turn one back on after a Dismiss or Don't show again.
setup uninstall	uninstall.md	Reverse the install: remove the snapshot, the local lock, symlinks, hook, doc sections, and this skill. Leaves .apache-magpie.lock — that is unadopt. Keeps .apache-magpie-overrides/ unless --purge-overrides is passed. Main-checkout only.
setup unadopt	adopt.md → Unadopt	Remove the committed floor lock .apache-magpie.lock and the .claude/settings.json wiring derived from it. Keeps .apache-magpie-overrides/ unless --purge-overrides is passed. Leaves every install — yours and everyone else's — untouched.

Main-checkout-only is marked per row above. Those sub-actions compare git rev-parse --git-dir with --git-common-dir and, in a worktree, refuse and point back at the main checkout. The marker has two reasons: update and the snapshot fallback of install/uninstall are pinned-snapshot operations, while adopt/unadopt write committed files. A marketplace install touches no repo state and runs anywhere.

reconcile is restricted only when the project is adopted, because its stamp then goes to the committed lock. A configured-but-unadopted project writes reconciled.json in its personal layer, <git-common-dir>/apache-magpie/, and has no worktree restriction (reconcile.md Step 0).

adopt and update always chain into worktree-init on every linked worktree. It is a no-op with no worktrees and idempotent where they already look wired, which is how broken symlinks and newly always-on families get repaired — nobody has to re-run anything per worktree.

A missing snapshot with a committed lock turns any sub-action into the recover-snapshot path: re-install per the lock, then continue.

Unrecognised sub-action

When the first positional argument matches no sub-action in the table above and is not a flag from Inputs, do not guess, and do not fall back to install. The usual cause is a typo (updaet, reconcie), and quietly mapping it to the nearest name runs something the user never named — update, reconcile and adopt stage committed files.

Print this instead, using the invocation name this install answers to (/magpie-setup:setup on a marketplace install, /magpie-setup on the pinned snapshot):

Unknown setup sub-action: `updaet`.
Did you mean `update`?  →  /magpie-setup:setup update

Sub-actions: install, config, adopt, update, worktree-init, verify,
reconcile, skill-sources, override, delegate, welcome, uninstall, unadopt

upgrade was this sub-action's old name. Do not print the block above for it: run the setup-upgrade skill instead, which runs update as its first step, and say so in one line.

• Suggest only a close match: an edit distance of one or two, or a prefix of the name. When several qualify (un → uninstall, unadopt), name them all. When none is close, print only the list.
• Then stop and wait. Run a suggested sub-action only once the user confirms it — a plain "yes" to a single suggestion is enough — never on your own because it was the only near match.

Inputs

Flag	Effect
from:<git-ref> / from:<version>	Install or upgrade from a specific framework ref or version. On install it replaces the prompt; with method:marketplace it pins the marketplace to that tag (/plugin marketplace add apache/magpie@<version>). On update it overrides the committed lock for this run only and does NOT update it.
method:<marketplace|git-branch|git-tag|svn-zip|local>	Pick the install method explicitly. Default on install: marketplace. The others are fallbacks (Golden rule 10), so the agent proposes the marketplace path and names the fallback instead of opening with a three-way prompt. marketplace writes nothing to the repo (install.md → Step M0b). local is framework-checkout only: it self-adopts by linking the in-repo skills/ source instead of fetching a snapshot (install.md → Local self-adoption).
agents:<list>	Comma-separated agent targets to wire symlinks into (agents.md registry ids: universal, claude-code, github, windsurf, goose, …). Default on adopt/update: the always-on neutral set (universal + claude-code + github) plus any other registry dir already in the repo. When passed, it replaces the detected set for that run — except universal (.agents/skills/), which is always kept because every other target relays into it.
skill-families:<list>	Comma-separated opt-in families: what to symlink on the snapshot path, which magpie-<family> plugins to install on the marketplace path. Any opt-in family declared by a family: key in the snapshot (today: security, pr-management, issue, release-management, repo-health, pairing, mentoring, contributor-growth). Default on adopt: prompt (install.md Step 5). Default on update: the families in <committed-lock> / <local-lock>, plus any opt-in family added since the lock was written (recorded back into the lock), and every framework skill in that set gets a valid symlink — missing or broken ones are created or repaired. Never accepts the always-on families (setup, utilities); per Golden rule 8 they are wired on every run and cannot be requested or opted out of.
--purge-overrides	(unadopt and uninstall) Also git rm -r .apache-magpie-overrides/. Default on both: keep.
--no-overrides	(any framework skill) Skip override lookup for this one invocation and run on framework defaults. Override files on disk are not read, changed, or deleted. The safety baseline (confidentiality, privacy, security) still applies. See One-shot defaults run.
dry-run	Show what the skill would do without writing anything.

What this skill is NOT for

• The secure agent setup (sandbox, hooks, pinned tools): setup-isolated-setup-install.
• Upgrading host tools (bubblewrap, socat, claude-code itself): setup-isolated-setup-update.
• Syncing ~/.claude-config across machines: setup-shared-config-sync.
• Upgrading Magpie end to end ("upgrade magpie"): setup-upgrade, which runs update and then checks and fixes this machine and project in one approved run.
• Committing framework changes. Those go as PRs against apache/magpie; the snapshot is read-only.

Failure modes

What each sub-action does when the ground is not what it expected, and which cases are recoverable: failure-modes.md.