Let autopilot work your backlog

Set up autopilot, then start a run over the ready items in your roadmap backlog. Each item builds in its own worktree. Autopilot stops where you told it to, so you review and approve before anything ships. You can pause or stop the run at any time.

1. Set autopilot up once on this machine. It asks which agent to use, how many items build at once, a cost cap, where to pause for your review and where to stop:

   aidlc autopilot setup
   

   To answer with flags instead, use --agent, --parallel, --cost-cap, --pause-after, --stop-at and --release. aidlc init --autopilot runs the same setup at the end of init.

2. See what autopilot would pick first. This writes nothing:

   aidlc roadmap next --autopilot
   

   An item marked run: attended in its roadmap file is never picked. Use that for work you want to do yourself.

3. Start a run. It starts in the background and returns at once:

   aidlc autopilot run --items 3
   

   Use --all instead of --items to keep going until nothing is ready. To change where this run stops, add --stop-at pr, --stop-at merge or --stop-at release. To change the phases it pauses after, add --pause-after requirements,design.

4. Watch it. Add --watch to keep the view live; q leaves and the run keeps going:

   aidlc autopilot status --watch
   

5. When an item waits for your review, read its artifact in the item's worktree. Then approve it. Only a person can run this command; an agent is refused:

   aidlc autopilot approve <instance>
   

6. To freeze the run, for example before you close the laptop, pause it. Resume it later:

   aidlc autopilot pause
   aidlc autopilot resume
   

7. To end the run, stop it. Agents already running finish their work first:

   aidlc autopilot stop
   

8. If you finished or abandoned an item by hand, tell autopilot to stop tracking it:

   aidlc autopilot forget <instance>
   

Run aidlc autopilot status. You should see the run and each item's step. When no run is active, it prints run: none active.