vago

Contribute to someone else's repo

Run Goals in a repo you don't own with no Vago file, Goal, prompt or Run report in any commit or PR.

In a repo you don’t own, such as an open-source project you’re sending a PR to, your Workflow, prompts, skills and Goals are yours and stay out of the history. Three things keep them out.

First, answer no when vago init asks Commit the Workflow? [y/N]. It then lists .vago/ and each vago- skill’s folder in .git/info/exclude, next to .vago-goals/, which it lists either way. .git/info/exclude is your clone’s own ignore file and is never committed, so the files stay in your checkout and out of git status, in the main checkout and in each Goal’s worktree. Vago copies .vago/ into the worktree on every vago run and hides it from git there too.

Second, use a Workflow that merges each Ticket locally and opens no PR, since the starter’s merge.sh makes the PR’s body the Goal report, with every Run’s time and cost:

# .vago/workflows/contribute.toml
harness      = "claude-code"
model        = "claude-opus-5-5"
idle_timeout = "10m"

[[steps]]
id   = "branch"
name = "New branch"
type = "shell"
run  = "sh .vago/scripts/branch.sh"

[[steps]]
id     = "implement"
name   = "Build"
type   = "agent"
prompt = "prompts/small-implement.md"

[[steps]]
id      = "check"
name    = "Checks"
type    = "shell"
run     = "sh .vago/scripts/check.sh"
on_fail = "continue"

[[steps]]
id     = "review"
name   = "Review"
type   = "agent"
prompt = "prompts/small-review.md"

[[steps]]
id   = "merge"
name = "Squash merge"
type = "shell"
run  = "sh .vago/scripts/merge-local.sh"

merge-local.sh is merge.sh up to its push, as in Solo, and check.sh runs the project’s own checks, as in Your own check Step. With no after_all Steps, the Goal ends with its work squashed into vago/<goal>, one commit per Ticket.

Third, read the branch before it leaves your machine, then push it to your fork under the name you want and open the PR yourself:

git log -p main..vago/<goal>
git push origin vago/<goal>:fix-parser-crash
gh pr create --head fix-parser-crash

Caveats

  • Vago doesn’t fetch before it cuts a Goal’s branch: it cuts vago/<goal> from your clone’s default branch as it is. Pull the upstream repo into it before vago goal new, as in git pull upstream main.
  • Each Ticket’s commit message is its name with spaces, such as 03 fix parser crash for the Ticket 03-fix-parser-crash. Reword them before you push if the project has its own commit style.
  • The agents commit with your git identity, and the Harness may add its own trailer to their commits, such as a Co-Authored-By line. Check the log, and the Harness’s own settings, if the project has rules about either.

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