Inputs

• Env: optional RELAYSKILLROOT defaults to skills.
• Files: leaves JSON passed by --leaves-file, child prompt/rubric/Done Criteria files, immutable cohorts under ~/.relay/fleets/, and child runs under ~/.relay/runs/.
• Sibling scripts: ${RELAYSKILLROOT:-skills}/relay-fleet/scripts/relay-fleet.js, ${RELAYSKILLROOT:-skills}/relay-dispatch/scripts/dispatch.js, ${RELAYSKILLROOT:-skills}/relay-review/scripts/review-runner.js, ${RELAYSKILLROOT:-skills}/relay-merge/scripts/finalize-run.js.

relay-fleet

Use when

• Driving already planned relay leaves through fan-out, review/redispatch, serial merge, and close
• Re-running the same fleet command after a crashed or killed session
• Continuing an immutable cohort from its current child-run facts
• Printing read-only aggregate status for a fleet

Do not use when

• Decomposing raw or ambiguous requests into leaves — use relay-ready
• Authoring per-leaf rubrics or dispatch prompts — use relay-plan
• Dispatching a single task or run — use relay-dispatch
• Reviewing one standalone child PR — use relay-review

Run multi-leaf orchestration after relay-ready and relay-plan have already produced leaf artifacts. A fleet stores only one immutable cohort. Status is derived afresh from Relay run.json records and canonical inspect results; it never owns child state, retry history, or a cache. Retired run artifacts are not read.

Design rationale, rejected alternatives, non-goals, and the Phase 2/3 roadmap: [references/design.md](references/design.md).

To run a dev-backlog sprint batch as one fleet wave, use the mapping recipe in [references/sprint-to-leaves.md](references/sprint-to-leaves.md).

Input Contract

Use a JSON file containing a non-empty leaves[] array. Each leaf must include:

• leaf_ref: stable fleet-local child key derived during planning
• issue_number: GitHub issue number for fleet issue-lock admission
• branch: child dispatch branch
• prompt_file: prepared dispatch prompt
• rubric_file: prepared relay-plan rubric
• donecriteriafile: frozen Done Criteria snapshot
• ownership: validated { "sprint", "track", "component" } copied from the dev-backlog sprint-state JSON that supplied the batch

relay-fleet only fans out already-decomposed leaf contracts; it never splits a raw or ambiguous request itself — route that intake through relay-ready first and pass its leaf output here.

All leaves must carry the same normalized owner. ownership.track must equal the basename of ownership.sprint without .md; component is a separate dev-backlog scope key and need not equal the track. Before admission, the canonical path, track, and component must exactly match the trusted schema-v2 sprint-state.js --track result, and the path must resolve to an existing regular file in the current repo's backlog/sprints/; relay-fleet does not parse that markdown. Missing, malformed, contradictory, unresolved, stale, or mixed-track ownership is rejected before a cohort or child dispatch exists: one fleet is one track.

Optional per-leaf fields passed through to the current dispatch.js contract are executor, model, network_access, timeout, reasoning, and copy. Submit dependent work in a later fleet wave after its prerequisite fleet is terminal; the immutable cohort intentionally carries no second dependency scheduler. If a leaf selects an unsupported executor or an unavailable model provider, pause that leaf and correct the explicit leaf input before resuming the fleet.

Commands

node "${RELAY_SKILL_ROOT:-skills}/relay-fleet/scripts/relay-fleet.js" \
  --repo . \
  --fleet-id fleet-481 \
  --leaves-file /tmp/fleet-481-leaves.json \
  --parallel 4

Read-only aggregate status:

node "${RELAY_SKILL_ROOT:-skills}/relay-fleet/scripts/relay-fleet.js" \
  --repo . \
  --fleet-id fleet-481 \
  --status

The cohort is written with exclusive creation. Repeating exactly the same normalized leaves is idempotent; any byte difference fails closed. --status never writes it.

Dry-run validates the leaf file and invokes child dispatch.js --dry-run for each leaf without writing a cohort:

node "${RELAY_SKILL_ROOT:-skills}/relay-fleet/scripts/relay-fleet.js" \
  --repo . \
  --fleet-id fleet-481 \
  --leaves-file /tmp/fleet-481-leaves.json \
  --dry-run \
  --json

Behavior

• The default command invokes skills/relay-dispatch/scripts/dispatch.js once per leaf that has no derived child run, and always passes --fleet-id plus the typed --ownership-json owner.
• A child matches only when its immutable parent id, branch, Done Criteria hash, and ownership digest all match its cohort leaf. Zero matches is retry-pending; multiple matches or an unmatched parent child is operator attention.
• --review additionally drives review-pending children and serially finalizes ready-to-merge children. It writes no fleet state; each child remains the sole owner of its lifecycle.
• Pre-record failures have no durable synthetic child state. The same cohort invocation retries its no-run leaf, while the subprocess receipt is the immediate evidence.
• The fleet is closed only when every derived child is merged. escalated, merge blocks, drift, duplicate matches, and orphan parent children remain operator attention.
• Each child dispatch owns worktree creation, in-flight run checks, executor invocation, and child run/fact writes.
• Fleet issue locks are checked before each child spawn; dispatch.js --fleet-id performs the durable lock during the actual child run.
• --status is read-only and derives the complete view from immutable cohort bytes plus child records and canonical inspections. It never creates files, changes child records, or repairs artifacts.

SPOF

There is intentionally no daemon. A fleet makes progress only while relay-fleet is actively running. Pause by killing the process. Resume by re-running the same primary command with the same --fleet-id and, when available, the same --leaves-file; the command re-derives child actions, skips waiting children, and continues no-run or exact-redispatch leaves.

/goal Persistence

For long fleets, the operator may activate host /goal after fan-out to keep one session driving the daemonless loop. Use the copy-paste condition and idempotent operating loop in [references/goal-persistence.md](references/goal-persistence.md); the condition must name the transcript-visible --status --json check, not just an operator process.