Four commands, in order. Each one is safe to run again, and nothing before the last touches your repository, your tracker or your schedule.

1. Write the config

npx ak-harness loop init

It asks only what a preset cannot answer — the repository, the project name, the tracker team and workspace, whose queue this machine drains — and writes loop.config.yaml from one of five presets (web-app, library, monorepo, data-pipeline, mobile). Everything the preset already says is left out of the file, so the config diff shows what this project decided.

--dry-run prints the file it would write. --global also creates ~/.agentskit/harness.yaml — the providers, binaries and notification channels shared by every project on this machine.

2. Check the machine

npx ak-harness loop doctor

Nothing is dispatched. It checks the runner and its version, the provider CLIs and their remaining usage, the routing decision per role, this machine's free slots, the queue, the review CLI, the installed agents your registry points at, and the flow profiles your rules reference. Exit code 1 means a check failed.

Then rehearse a dispatch without doing one:

npx ak-harness loop tick --dry-run --max 1

It prints which issue, which contract, which worktree and which model — and writes nothing.

3. Install the schedule

npx ak-harness loop install

The guided install: the checks again, an optional rehearsal, an offer to create loop.config.local.yaml for this machine, and then — after you confirm — the automations that run loop stage tick and loop stage deliver on the schedule in schedule.*. Idempotent by name: running it again reconciles instead of duplicating. --dry-run shows the exact argv and creates nothing.

4. Watch the first tick

npx ak-harness loop tick --max 1     # contract → (plan → vote) → dispatch one issue
npx ak-harness loop watch --once     # what each in-flight issue is doing
npx ak-harness loop deliver          # PR → checks → review → definition of done → merge

Once the automations are installed, do not run tick/deliver by hand on the same project: that races the scheduled run and can double-dispatch. Use the read-only commands instead — loop debrief (what the loop is doing right now), loop observe (anomalies and metrics), loop retro --since 7d (how it has been doing), loop paused (what it stopped on).

What the worker leaves behind

Every worker writes three files into .ak-loop/ at the root of its worktree:

loop deliver reads them before the merge gate. A file that is missing comes back to the worker as a fix round naming the file; a file that exists but does not match its schema is treated as worse than absent, because it looks like evidence.