receive-manifest

Receive Queue Manifest

Purpose

Accept an incoming research queue manifest from the Vertix Solutions primary machine, validate it, update the active lane registry, and confirm the new priorities. The manifest tells this machine what to research next — this skill makes that handoff clean and auditable.

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Steps

Step 1 — Accept the Manifest

The manifest arrives in one of two ways:

• Pasted directly into the chat as a JSON block
• As a file the user indicates is in the working directory (ask for the filename if unclear)

If pasted: parse the JSON directly from the message. If a file: read the file and parse it.

If the content isn't valid JSON or doesn't have a research_queue array, stop and tell the user: "This doesn't look like a valid research queue manifest. It should be a JSON file with a research_queue array. Can you check the file and try again?"

Step 2 — Validate the Manifest

Check each item in research_queue:

Check	Rule	On Fail
domain_slug present	Required field	Flag item as invalid — skip it
domain_slug format	Lowercase, hyphens only	Warn — proceed with caution
notes_target present	Required field	Default to 60, flag assumption
scope_brief present	Recommended	Note as missing — research will use domain name only
priority present	Recommended	Assign sequential priority based on list order

Step 3 — Show the User the Incoming Queue

Before making any changes, display a confirmation table:

Incoming Research Queue — [manifest_id]
Generated by: [generated_by field]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Priority  Domain Slug                      Target  Current  Action
1         microsoft-365-administration     60      [N]      [Continue / Start fresh / Already complete]
2         entra-id-identity-management     60      [N]      [...]
...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[N] lanes updating | [N] already at target (no action needed)

Action column logic:

• Already complete — current notes ≥ target; no research needed
• Continue — current notes > 0 but below target; pick up where left off
• Start fresh — no notes yet for this domain

Ask: "Does this look right? I'll update the research lanes as soon as you confirm."

Do not update anything until the user confirms.

Step 4 — Update the Lane Registry

On confirmation:

1. Write the new lane configuration to qmi-kb/lane-registry.json:

{
  "manifest_id": "[from manifest]",
  "loaded_at": "[YYYY-MM-DD]",
  "source": "[generated_by from manifest]",
  "lanes": [
    {
      "lane_id": "L[N]",
      "domain_slug": "[slug]",
      "notes_target": [N],
      "current_notes": [N],
      "scope_brief": "[from manifest or 'See domain-scopes.md']",
      "priority": [N]
    }
  ]
}

2. Confirm to the user: "Lane registry updated. [N] lanes are now active. The highest-priority lane with remaining work is [domain]. Ready to start research — say 'run lane 1' or 'start researching [domain]' to begin."

Step 5 — Scope Brief Handling

If the incoming manifest includes scope_brief for a domain, use that as the research scope for that lane (it overrides the built-in scope from domain-scopes.md). The Vertix machine may send refined scopes over time.

If no scope_brief is provided, fall back to the built-in scope in references/domain-scopes.md of the research-engine skill.

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Edge Cases

Manifest has domains not in the built-in registry: Accept them — the Vertix machine may add new domains over time. Add them to the lane registry as-is. Note to the user that this is a new domain not in the built-in scope library, so research will be guided only by the scope_brief in the manifest.

Manifest has fewer than 8 lanes: That's fine — run only the lanes specified. Inactive lanes retain their existing notes but won't be added to until a future manifest includes them.

User wants to keep some existing lanes and add new ones: If the manifest doesn't include a domain that's already in the registry, ask: "The incoming manifest doesn't include [domain]. Do you want to keep that lane running, or pause it?"

Manifest is the same as what's already loaded: Detect this by comparing manifest_id. If identical, say: "This manifest is already loaded (ID: [id]). No changes needed."