Orchestration Watchdog
Prompt
Spawns a read-only background Pi ticker that wakes the coordinator session every N minutes to check worker sessions, jj status, and commit gates.
By Vedang Manerikar · prompts/orchestration-watchdog.md · View source
What it does
When a coordinator session delegates work to background Pi sessions, it can easily go idle between updates or forget to commit completed slices. /orchestration-watchdog verifies the coordinator's intercom name and working directory, then spawns a minimal background Pi session (orchestration-watchdog-<master-id>) via interactive_shell.
Every N minutes (default 5, using deepseek/deepseek-flash with bash-only tools), the watchdog sends a structured WATCHDOG TICK over pi-intercom reminding the coordinator to check running workers, review completed tasks, inspect jj status, and run quality gates.
When to reach for it
Invocation: Run /orchestration-watchdog or /orchestration-watchdog 10 in a coordinator session.
- Supervising parallel background Pi sessions
- Keep the coordinator session waking up on a fixed cadence until all delegated tasks are reviewed and committed.
What it adds
- /orchestration-watchdog prompt template with pre-launch identity checks, duplicate-watchdog prevention, and post-launch verification.
Commands: /orchestration-watchdog [interval-minutes]
How it fits
- Pi Interactive Shell — Runs the background watchdog Pi process in hands-free PTY mode.
- Pi Intercom — Delivers the periodic WATCHDOG TICK messages back to the coordinator session.
- Orchestration Watchdog Stop — Cleanly shuts down the watchdog session when orchestrated work is finished.
Good to know
- The watchdog session is strictly read-only—it only sleeps and sends intercom ticks, never touching files or repositories.
Source and setup
- Loaded via
prompts/orchestration-watchdog.md- Attribution
- By Vedang Manerikar