session-flow: continue-in-background dirty-tree gate unspecified when consuming directory is not a git repository

[kyle-sexton]

Context

Found dogfooding continue-in-background (shipped in PR #924) from a session whose consuming directory is not a git repository (home directory, claude started outside any repo). The delivery step's dirty-tree gate runs git status --porcelain -uall in the consuming project and specifies behavior for clean, dirty, and linked-worktree states — but not for "not a repository at all". The command fails with fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git.

The sibling save-point engine (reference/save-point.md) is unaffected — memory-dir resolution has a non-repo default. Only the gate step lacks a specified branch.

Proposed work

Spec the non-repo case in plugins/session-flow/skills/continue-in-background/SKILL.md (dirty-tree gate, step 1): when the consuming directory is not a git repository, state the honest reading explicitly — there is no uncommitted work to protect and no worktree isolation to rely on; proceed with the launch and say so in the launch report. One or two sentences at the step that owns the gate, per the skill's inline-gotcha convention.

Acceptance criteria

• Gate step names the non-repo branch and its behavior (proceed + report wording).
• check-skill, validate-plugin-contracts, changelog-parity pass (patch bump if text ships).

References

• PR feat(session-flow)!: extract background delegation into continue-in-background #924 (skill introduction), issue session-flow: /handoff --bg is misleading — background delegation deserves an explicit action #233 (origin design)
• Observed: git status --porcelain -uall in non-repo home dir → fatal: not a git repository

[kyle-sexton]

This was generated by AI (triage lane, gate-audit pass — cycle 2 retry, instance melo-lap-001-triage-20260727T125559Z).

Gate-audit verdict: LIFT — flipped needs-human → agent-ready.

The non-repo behavior is pre-decided in the issue text itself (proceed + report, no uncommitted work to protect), bounded to 1-2 sentences in one skill file, with named passing gates in acceptance.

No human-floor concern applies (not security-surface, not a dependency pin, not cross-cutting, not irreversible). Consensus: fable-lens panel (read-only, prior cycle) + an independent fresh-context opus second lens + this lane's own read all agree LIFT, on an issue text that poses no unresolved design choice.

This lane triages/gate-audits only — it does not execute the fix. Eligible for autonomous pickup.

[kyle-sexton]

[kyle-sexton]

PR #1728 opened — non-repo branch specified at the dirty-tree gate, with any other git rev-parse result (including a zero-exit false) routed to a conservative unknown default so the added case cannot make the gate fail open. check-skill, validate-plugin-contracts, and changelog-parity pass; 0.17.16 → 0.17.17.

This was generated by AI (worker lane, instance MELO-LAP-001-worker-202607290351).