Status Command

The status command validates whether growth loop requirements have been implemented in your codebase, using AST parsing to verify that required files, functions, and patterns are present.

Prerequisites

Before running status, you need:

• A skene-context/growth-loops/ directory containing one or more growth loop JSON files. These are generated by the build command. See Build for details.
• For the --find-alternatives flag: an API key configured for a cloud LLM provider (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic) or a local LLM server running. See configuration for setup instructions.

Basic usage

Check the implementation status of all growth loops in the current project:

uvx skene status

The command auto-detects skene-context/growth-loops/ relative to the current directory and validates every growth loop JSON file found there.

Specify a different project root:

uvx skene status ./my-project

Point to a specific context directory:

uvx skene status --context ./my-project/skene-context

Use LLM-powered semantic matching to find alternative implementations for missing requirements:

uvx skene status --find-alternatives --api-key "your-key"

Flag reference

How it works

The status command follows a three-step pipeline:

Step 1: Locate growth loop definitions

The command searches for growth loop JSON files in <context>/growth-loops/. If --context is not provided, it auto-detects the context directory by checking:

1. <PATH>/skene-context/ (where PATH is the positional argument, defaulting to .)
2. ./skene-context/

If no growth-loops/ directory is found, the command exits with an error.

Step 2: Validate requirements

Each growth loop JSON defines requirements in two categories:

File requirements — The command checks that each required file exists and runs verification checks against it:

• contains — file contains a literal substring
• contains_regex — file matches a regular expression
• function_exists — a function with the given name exists (Python AST parsing)
• class_exists — a class with the given name exists (Python AST parsing)
• import_exists — an import matching the given name exists (Python AST parsing)

Function requirements — The command checks that each required function exists in the specified file, using Python AST parsing. If an expected signature is provided, it also validates that the actual signature matches.

Step 3: Display validation report

The command outputs a summary showing:

• Total loops validated and how many are complete
• Per-loop breakdown with pass/fail status for every file and function requirement
• Detailed failure reasons (file not found, function missing, signature mismatch)

A loop is marked COMPLETE when all its file and function requirements pass. Otherwise it is marked INCOMPLETE with a table showing which checks failed.

Finding alternative implementations

When --find-alternatives is enabled, the command extracts all function definitions from the project using AST parsing, then sends missing requirements to the LLM for semantic matching. This helps discover:

• Functions that already fulfill a requirement but have a different name
• Existing implementations in unexpected file locations
• Partial implementations that could be adapted

Alternative matches are displayed below the validation table with a confidence score (only matches above 60% confidence are shown).

uvx skene status --find-alternatives

The LLM configuration is loaded from your config file and can be overridden with --api-key, --provider, and --model.

Example output

Project root: /path/to/project
Context dir:  /path/to/project/skene-context
Loops dir:    /path/to/project/skene-context/growth-loops

Validating Share Flag...
  File requirement met: src/components/ShareButton.tsx...
  Function requirement met: handleShare...
Loop complete: Share Flag...

╭── Growth Loop Validation  —  1/2 loops complete ──╮
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Share Flag (share_flag)  COMPLETE (3/3 checks, 12ms)

   ✅ GROWTH LOOP COMPLETE: Share Flag

Onboarding Flow (onboarding_flow)  INCOMPLETE (1/3 checks, 8ms)
 ✅  src/onboarding/welcome.py   Exists   OK
 ❌  src/onboarding/progress.py  Missing  File not found
 ❌  track_progress               src/onboarding/progress.py  Missing

1 loop(s) have unmet requirements.

Next steps

• Build -- Generate growth loop definitions that the status command validates
• Chat -- Use the interactive terminal chat for ad-hoc growth analysis
• Configuration -- Set up persistent config for LLM settings used by --find-alternatives
• CLI Reference -- Full reference for all commands and flags