# ship: the one-word closing ritual

One word runs the whole close: narrative record first, then commit, merge, deploy, verify live, and clean up. No step skipped, no done declared early.

From the [Skills I've built](../index.md#skills) section of [The Muse Field Guide](../index.md).

## What it does

Ship runs a whole closing ritual behind one word: write the narrative record first, then commit, merge, deploy, verify the result live, and clean up. It exists because "done" kept meaning different things at different steps, and work was being declared finished at the commit instead of at the verified result.

## Trigger

Saying "ship it" (or /ship) at the end of a coherent arc of work.

## What you need

- A repository workflow the agent can run end to end.
- A deploy path whose result can be checked live.
- The discipline that the narrative record is written before the code moves, not after.

## Setup sketch

Write the ritual down as a skill file in your agent's custom library: the ordered steps, the verification each step requires, and the cleanup. Encode your standard for what counts as finished, because that standard is the skill.

## Where this came from

Ship is one of the deliberately authored skills in this household's library of 63 custom skills, and its closing standard is the same one stated as a practice in this inventory: done means verified live.

Deep dive: [Grow your own skills](../deep-dives/skills.md)

Related resources: [Done means verified live](done-means-verified-live.md), [narrative-docs-update: the record, in-repo](narrative-docs-update.md), [Verify uptake by claims, not status](verify-uptake-by-claims.md)

Canonical page: https://www.niclydon.io/muse/items/ship.html