quiet

Quiet supervision mode (kunchenguid/firstmate#2356): the same token-saving daemon tradeoff as /afk, made explicit for a captain who is staying, watching the session, and does not want to exit the mode just by chatting.

Where a daemon runs, this skill is a thin wrapper. The afk skill owns the daemon's injection, busy/composer guards, and reliability properties; quiet mode uses that machinery while the captain remains present. For captain-held rechecks under quiet, see architecture.

What it does

0. First check whether quiet mode needs anything here. On Pi or pi-signed, enter nothing: the attended branch already keeps routine wakes out of this conversation (the afk skill's step 2); tell the captain so. Everywhere else run bin/fm-afk-launch.sh quiet-check; its header's QUIET MODE owns what each result means.

   • Exit 0: enter nothing - no record, no flag, no daemon, and /quiet off then needs nothing either. Tell the captain in AGENTS.md section 9 language that supervision here already works that way: routine fleet events stay off this conversation, while decisions, failures, credentials, and review-ready work still reach them. When its line says the supervision session is paused, say instead that routine updates reach them until it recovers, and when it next retries.
   • Exit 2: an away record is live, so the captain has returned: run the afk skill's return and clear its catch-up gate, then run quiet-check again and follow its new result.
   • Exit 1: go on to step 1; if it printed a line, first tell the captain plainly what keeps supervision from already being quiet here.

1. Enter the lifecycle through bin/fm-afk-launch.sh, exactly as /afk does, with FM_AFK_MODE=quiet set first. Follow the afk skill's record entry, daemon launch, and announcement steps, except that on a home that runs the supervision host its /afk no-daemon rule does not apply after quiet-check exits 1. Never arm a separate fm-watch.sh. Export FM_AFK_MODE=quiet in the shell that invokes bin/fm-afk-launch.sh enter and start (or start-native), so the record notes quiet mode and state/.afk's first line reads quiet instead of away. On a home that runs the supervision host, launch the daemon on the path this harness uses without the host; start and start-native take quiet mode from the record enter wrote. Keep FM_AFK_MODE=quiet on a quiet refresh: an /afk entry, even without new words, replaces a quiet record with an away record and starts hold-for-return.

2. Acknowledge in AGENTS.md section 9 language: "Captain, quiet mode is active; I will batch routine updates and surface only decisions, failures, credentials, or review-ready work - ordinary chat will not exit this, say /quiet off when you want normal per-wake responses back."

How to exit quiet mode

Unlike /afk, ordinary chat is never the exit signal - that is the entire point of this mode (AGENTS.md section 8's away-mode stub, quiet branch).

• Only an explicit /quiet off (or the captain plainly asking to leave quiet mode / resume normal supervision) exits it: run bin/fm-afk-return.sh unchanged, exactly the procedure /afk's "How to exit afk" section documents for its own return path (correct-ordered daemon shutdown, durable wake presentation and acknowledgement, escalation/wedge evidence, and the return-catch-up gate). That script does not read or care about the flag's mode, so it needs no quiet-specific variant.
• A marked daemon escalation, or a message beginning /quiet while already in quiet mode (refresh, not exit) -> stay in quiet mode and process it, the same two carve-outs /afk documents for away mode.
• Every other message while in quiet mode is simply answered as ordinary work; the flag and daemon are left untouched.

Orthogonal to approval authority

Quiet mode changes how aggressively firstmate surfaces things, never who approves what. A PR ready for merge keeps the merge authority from AGENTS.md section 7, and a needs-decision finding keeps the ask-user-authority policy.

The captain is present, so quiet mode holds nothing for a return. The record a quiet entry writes carries quiet mode (bin/fm-afk-contract.sh mode), and its entry, read-back, and session-start lines say so. Every action the captain asks for or standing authority covers - landing local-only work, a merge, a dispatch - proceeds now exactly as it would without quiet mode; the afk skill's away holds never apply to a quiet record.

Must not hide a decision or a failure

Per the issue's own author triage: quiet mode is presentation only. Progress, retries, and internal mechanics stay below deck exactly as in away mode, but review-ready work, findings, decisions, failures, and credentials escalate every time, through the same classification policy /afk owns. Quiet mode is opt-in and never the unconsented default; only an explicit /quiet invocation enters it.