fork-lifecycle

Keeps [packages.groups.forks].entries in home/.chezmoidata/packages.toml in sync with the fleet in prateek/forks. This is the dotfiles side of the downstream-fork system (design: ADR 0015). Fleet operations — assembling, releasing, retiring the fork itself — live in the fork-ops skill in prateek/forks. Adopt and retire here are ordinary PRs; no automation writes packages.toml.

The single writer is scripts/packages/fork-lifecycle-entry (add/remove, idempotent, TOML-parse-guarded). Package names are opaque tokens prateek/forks/<tool>-fork.

Read fleet state

No clone needed — gh api against prateek/forks:

# forks in the fleet
gh api repos/prateek/forks/contents --jq '.[] | select(.type=="dir") | .name'
# a fork's manifest (kind lives in [release]); the retired marker; latest release
gh api repos/prateek/forks/contents/<tool>/.fork/fork.toml --jq .content | base64 -d
gh api repos/prateek/forks/contents/<tool>/.fork/retired   # 404 = still live
gh api repos/prateek/forks/releases \
  --jq '[.[]|select(.tag_name|startswith("<tool>-v"))][0].tag_name'
# retire self-issues (they record what to flip back to)
gh issue list --repo prateek/forks --author "app/prateek-fork-automation" --state open
# fork-specific build/sync gotchas, if a fork won't adopt cleanly (404 = none yet)
gh api repos/prateek/forks/contents/<tool>/learnings.md --jq .content | base64 -d

Build-resolution learnings are recorded on the prateek/forks side (the fork-ops skill writes <tool>/learnings.md); this skill only reads them.

A fork is adopt-eligible when it has a <tool>-v* release and no .fork/retired. It is retire-eligible when .fork/retired exists (or it filed a retire self-issue).

Adopt

scripts/packages/fork-lifecycle-entry add \
  --file home/.chezmoidata/packages.toml \
  --name prateek/forks/<tool>-fork \
  --kind <formula|cask> \        # from the fork's fork.toml [release].kind
  --replaces <official-token>    # what the fork shadows in brew; omit if none

kind comes from the fork's fork.toml. replaces is the official brew token the fork stands in for — you know it, or read it from the retire self-issue's "flip back to" line.

Retire

scripts/packages/fork-lifecycle-entry remove \
  --file home/.chezmoidata/packages.toml \
  --name prateek/forks/<tool>-fork

brew bundle reinstalls the official package once the fork entry is gone — the apply-time reconciler runs first and uninstalls the fork.

Validate, then PR

scripts/packages/render-brewfile --machine-type personal   # the entry renders
just test-shell tests/bats/packages/fork-reconcile.bats     # swap logic still holds

Then open an ordinary PR with gh pr create. A human merges; chezmoi apply swaps the install. Close the fork's retire self-issue if one drove the change.