Remove auto-chain handoffs from pipeline phases

[maxfindel]

Summary

• Remove handoffs with send: true from all four pipeline phase commands (specify, plan, tasks, implement)
• Each phase now completes its work, reports what it did, and stops — the caller decides when to advance

Problem

The send: true handoff frontmatter causes the entire speckit pipeline to fire as one unstoppable chain: specify → plan → tasks → implement. In automated/headless environments (orchestrators, CI, remote pods), this creates serious issues:

1. Session contamination — phases inherit stale context from prior runs on the same environment, causing the pilot to work on the wrong issue
2. Zombie processes — auto-chained phases spawn child processes that survive killall, requiring killall -9
3. Wrong-issue execution — when an environment is reused for a different issue, the chained phase picks up leftover spec/plan files from the previous issue
4. No verification checkpoint — the orchestrator cannot inspect results, run tests, or course-correct between phases

Evidence (6 production runs, 2026-02-17)

Issue	Incident	Time Lost
github#1303	/speckit.specify auto-chained, pilot fixed unrelated test infrastructure on master	~15 min
github#1310	3 consecutive speckit attempts auto-chained to issue github#1316 context	~15 min
github#1310	Zombie speckit process committed github#1316 fix onto github#1310 branch	~10 min

Total: ~40 minutes lost to auto-chain in a single day across 6 runs.

Fix

Remove all handoffs frontmatter from the four pipeline templates:

• templates/commands/specify.md — removed Plan + Clarify handoffs
• templates/commands/plan.md — removed Tasks + Checklist handoffs
• templates/commands/tasks.md — removed Implement + Analyze handoffs
• templates/commands/implement.md — removed Analyze handoff

Utility commands (clarify, analyze, checklist) already had no handoffs — no changes needed.

Impact

• Interactive users: Each phase now stops and reports. User runs next phase explicitly. This matches the documented workflow (/speckit.specify → review → /speckit.plan → review → etc.)
• Automated orchestrators: Can now verify results, run tests, and course-correct between phases — which is the entire point of a phased pipeline
• No breaking change: The commands still work identically — they just don't auto-fire the next one

Test plan

• Run /speckit.specify <issue> — should complete and stop (no auto-chain to plan)
• Run /speckit.plan — should complete and stop (no auto-chain to tasks)
• Run /speckit.tasks — should complete and stop (no auto-chain to implement)
• Run /speckit.implement — should complete and stop (no auto-chain to analyze)
• Verify each phase still produces correct artifacts (spec.md, plan.md, tasks.md)

🤖 Generated with Claude Code