If you are tending a swarm right now: jump to the Orchestrator Decision Tree below. For recovery recipes see RECOVERY.md. Everything else is context.

Vibing With NTM

The One Rule: Observe real state before every nudge. A swarm is not stuck, done, or blocked until pane truth, robot state, work graph, and artifact/git evidence agree.

This skill is the operator layer above the tools — the decisions, ticks, nudges, and recoveries an orchestrator performs. It deliberately does NOT re-document the ntm command surface: the binary self-describes via ntm --help and ntm robot-docs (and the /ntm skill catalogs it). Always re-query those for syntax, flags, and schemas; come back here for when to act and when to stop.

Outcome — When a Tending Session Has Delivered

A tending session is complete (for now) when all of the following hold:

• Every pane is in one of three explicit states: making progress (recent useful output / git / bead movement), explicitly blocked with a logged blocker and handoff path, or standing down by policy (queue-dry, convergence, rate-limit cool-down). "Idle and you don't know why" is unfinished tending work.
• Every intervention was observed to land via tail/event/git/br/mail evidence within one observation window. Sends with no downstream signal are presumed lost, not silently successful.
• Any policy lever you adjusted (review-only, rate-limit posture, ensemble set) is logged — undocumented policy changes are how swarms drift.
• For convergence: the triple-check has fired — ready queue empty AND no in-flight work AND no expected upstream signals. Two of three is observation lag, not convergence.
• For queue-dry: you have stopped manufacturing work. Tending discipline includes the discipline of doing nothing.