---
description: Make THIS directory a project that tracks issues — run `kettle init`, which creates the `.kettle/` marker every other command resolves the store from, migrates an older store in, gitignores it, and writes this command file and its skills. Carries the rules the binary cannot enforce — never an `--at` nobody named, never a migration clash resolved for them.
argument-hint: "[--at DIR] [--interactive] [--login NAME] [--repo owner/name] [--dry-run]"
allowed-tools: Bash(kettle init:*), Bash(kettle config:*), Bash(git rev-parse:*)
---

# /kettle:init — make this directory a project

Initializing is a statement, and the operator makes it: *this* directory is the
project whose issues live in it. Nothing infers it — `.git` is in every clone,
and a tool that inferred its root from one wrote other projects' issues into its
own versioned cache. It is answered once, by a person, and every command
downstream reads the answer instead of guessing.

**This is a command, not a skill, and that is the point.** It is invoked by an
operator who typed it. There is no `description:` here for a model to match on,
because "which directory is the project" is not a question a model gets to answer
on its own.

The binary does the work and is idempotent. What this file carries is what it
cannot decide.

## Steps

1. Run it, passing the operator's arguments through unchanged:

   ```bash
   kettle init $ARGUMENTS
   ```

   With no `--at` it initializes the current directory. **Never supply an `--at`
   the operator did not name.** Which directory is the project is the one
   question this command exists to have a person answer; picking a plausible one
   is the failure the marker replaces.

2. Report what it printed, verbatim. `already initialized — nothing to do` is a
   success, not something to work around.

`--login` pins a login by name and `--repo` names the tracker repository; both
are optional and both can be added later by running `init` again — it writes the
config without disturbing settings it was not given. Neither is a credential:
the tokens live in one file per machine, `/kettle:auth`.

## `--interactive` is for a person at a terminal

It walks the operator through the login, the repository, this `.claude/` tree and
the `AGENTS.md` mirror hook, one question at a time.

**Do not run it.** It refuses a stdin that is not a terminal and says so, which is
the right failure — but the right move is not to reach for it in the first place.
Every question it asks has a flag: `--login`, `--repo`, `--scaffold`,
`--mirror-hook`. Pass the flags the operator named and let the binary answer the
rest.

## When it stops

- **A linked worktree.** The binary refuses, and it is right to: `.kettle/` is
  gitignored, so a worktree has no marker by design and reaches the main
  checkout's store on its own — the walk crosses to it through the `gitdir:` in
  the `.git` *file*. A marker here would give one project two stores, and the
  second is deleted with the branch. What needs initializing, if anything, is the
  main checkout, and the refusal names it.
- **A name clash on the migration** — the same file name on both sides. It exits
  having changed nothing and names the files. Report that. Do **not** move,
  delete, or merge either side: one of them may be an `origin: local` issue,
  which *is* the issue and the only copy of that work. The operator decides
  which survives.
- **A marker already exists above this directory.** A second one gives that
  project a second store and the nearer one wins. Confirm with the operator
  before going ahead; usually they are standing in a subdirectory and there is
  nothing to do.

**No `kettle` on PATH?** `command not found: kettle` is the whole story — and it
means the binary that wrote this file has since moved or been removed, because
nothing else could have put it here. Stop and tell the operator to reinstall it:
`go install git.noodles.cam/claude-skills/marketplace/cli/cmd/kettle@latest`, or
`cd cli && make install` in a checkout of that repository (go.mod requires
**go 1.26**).

## After

- `/kettle:issue` works now — offline, no login, no network.
- `/kettle:auth` puts a token on this machine and pins the login this project
  runs under; needed only for the tracker side, `/kettle:sync`.
- `kettle config` prints every path and setting this directory resolved to, and
  is the first thing to run when something looks like it landed in the wrong
  place. It also reports when this `.claude/` tree was written by an older
  `kettle` than the one now installed.

The full flag table for `init` is the generated block in `/kettle:project`.