$ca-status — state snapshot

SkillProductivity

Show the project's current state at a glance — stage, open tasks, open questions, overrides since the last checkpoint, current branch. Read-only.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the $ca-status — state snapshot skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by arbiterforge/codearbiter in plugins/ca-pi/skills/ca-status/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

A read-only summary of .codearbiter/ state. No skill is routed to; no file is modified.

Drift mode

With the exact argument drift, load and follow skills/ca-context-check/SKILL.md. The audit begins read-only; re-scout or re-baseline may write only after the user's explicit selection. In drift mode the context-check contract governs; the opening summary and Hard gate below apply only to the no-argument snapshot. With no argument, continue with the unchanged read-only snapshot below. Reject other arguments rather than treating them as drift mode.

Flow

The orchestrator reads and presents:

  1. Stage — the stage: maturity value from <project-root>/.codearbiter/CONTEXT.md frontmatter.
  2. Pipelines — every slug in <project-root>/.codearbiter/specs/ and plans/, with how far each got: spec awaiting approval, spec approved / no plan, plan in progress (ACCEPTED count vs. total from the plan's status column), or complete. An interrupted pipeline is resumable via $ca-feature — say so on its line.
  3. Open tasks — the in-flight count from <project-root>/.codearbiter/open-tasks.md (top-level - bullets excluding done - [x]; the same _taskboardlib count the SessionStart hook uses).
  4. Open questions — the count of unresolved [CONFIRM-NN] placeholders in <project-root>/.codearbiter/open-questions.md.
  5. Overrides since last checkpoint — entries in <project-root>/.codearbiter/overrides.log newer than the marker in <project-root>/.codearbiter/last-checkpoint.
  6. Current branch — from git.

Output

## Project status — YYYY-MM-DD

Stage:            N
Branch:           <current branch>
Pipelines:
  <slug>          plan 3/7 ACCEPTED — resume with $ca-feature "<slug>"
  <slug>          spec approved, no plan
Open tasks:       N
Open questions:   N ([CONFIRM-NN] unresolved)
Overrides since last checkpoint: N

No specs and no plans → Pipelines: none.

If [CONFIRM-NN] placeholders are open, surface them — do not resolve them here.

When NOT to use

  • A full cross-cutting review → $ca-checkpoint.
  • A specific question → $ca-btw.

Hard gate

Read-only. MUST NOT modify any file. MUST NOT resolve a [CONFIRM-NN] it surfaces. No skill is routed to by this command.

Signals

GitHub stars
144
Forks
7
Last commit
Sep 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
ca-status
Source
github.com/arbiterforge/codearbiter