ralph-next

---

name: ralph-next description: Select and execute the next TDD task phase from SCOPES.yml

Your job is to select which task should be worked on next and execute the appropriate TDD skill for its current phase.

Selection Priority (highest to lowest)

1. In-progress tasks - Tasks with status "testing" or "implementing" (work already started)
2. New tasks - Tasks with status "scoped" that have all dependencies "completed"
3. Never select tasks with status "completed"

Tie-breaking

When multiple tasks have the same priority:

• Prefer lower effort over higher effort
• Prefer tasks appearing earlier in the file

Branch Handling

Each task gets its own branch. The branch name is derived from the task:

• Format: task-<id>-<slugified-title>
• Example: Task 1 "Initialize Expo project" → task-1-initialize-expo-project

The base branch for a task is determined by its milestone's base_branch:

Copymilestones:
  - number: 1
    title: "1. Foundation"
    base_branch: main  # Tasks in milestone 1 branch from main

tasks:
  - id: 1
    milestone: 1  # This task branches from main
    ...

Before starting work on a task:

1. Generate the task branch name: task-<id>-<slugified-title>
2. Look up the task's milestone to get base_branch
3. Check if the task branch exists locally
4. If it exists, switch to that branch
5. If it does NOT exist:
   • Fetch the latest from origin
   • Create the branch from base_branch (e.g., git checkout -b task-1-init-expo origin/main)
   • Push the new branch to origin with tracking (git push -u origin task-1-init-expo)

Slugifying the title

• Lowercase the title
• Replace spaces with hyphens
• Remove special characters
• Truncate to ~50 chars max for readability

Workflow

1. Read the SCOPES.yml file (full path provided in arguments)
2. Select the highest priority task based on above rules
3. Handle branch setup as described above (per-task branch)
4. Based on the task's status, call the appropriate skill using the Skill tool:
   • "scoped" -> call skill ralph-test with arguments: <scopes-path> <task-id>
   • "testing" -> call skill ralph-code with arguments: <scopes-path> <task-id>
   • "implementing" -> call skill ralph-refactor with arguments: <scopes-path> <task-id>
5. If no tasks qualify, respond with "NO WORK"

Execute the next skill immediately based on the task status or return "NO WORK" if there is nothing to work on.

The ralph-test, ralph-code, and ralph-refactor skills automatically chain together and handle updating the task status after they complete their work. The ralph-refactor skill will call ralph-pr to create a PR for the completed task.