Skills

Skill 9 of 17

Squad Version Check

2 minutes · 481 words · 17 sections

Install

$ npx skills add microsoft/waza --skill squad-version-check

$ npx skills add microsoft/waza

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Squad Version Check · microsoft/waza · Skills Docs

SKILL: Squad CLI Internals — Version Stamping & Upgrade Mechanics

Confidence: medium Discovered by: Data Date: 2026-05-26 Validated in: Issue #1173 recon (bradygaster/squad)

What This Skill Covers

Reusable knowledge about how @bradygaster/squad-cli stamps its version into squad.agent.md, how squad upgrade works, what it preserves vs. overwrites, and how to probe the npm registry for the latest version from a coordinator prompt.

Package & Registry Facts

Package name: @bradygaster/squad-cli
Registry: npm (public)
CLI binary: squad (registered via package.json#bin.squad)
Node version requirement: Node ≥22.5.0 (ESM-only codebase)

Version Stamping Mechanism

Source file: dist/cli/core/version.js

Three functions:

`getPackageVersion()`

Walks up from the compiled JS file to find package.json. Returns pkg.version. Works from both dist/cli/core/version.js and a bundled root cli.js. Returns '0.0.0' as fallback if not found.

`stampVersion(filePath, version)`

Mutates squad.agent.md in three places:

HTML comment:  (must be on the line immediately after frontmatter ---)
Identity line: - **Version:** {version}
Greeting instruction: backtick-quoted `Squad v{version}`

Called by: both init and upgrade — after copying the template to the destination.

`readInstalledVersion(filePath)`

Reads the stamped version back from squad.agent.md:

First tries HTML comment format: //
Falls back to old frontmatter format: /^version:\s*"([^"]+)"/m
Returns '0.0.0' on any error

`squad upgrade` Behavior

Source file: dist/cli/core/upgrade.js

What gets overwritten:

squad.agent.md — full overwrite from template, then stampVersion()
Files with overwriteOnUpgrade: true in TEMPLATE_MANIFEST: casting JSON files, template .md files, copilot-instructions.md (if @copilot enabled)
GitHub Actions workflows — from templates/workflows/; non-npm projects get type-aware stubs
Runs runMigrations() after file copy

What is PRESERVED:

team.md, routing.md, decisions.md, ceremonies.md (user-owned)
agents/*/history.md (individual agent memory)
.squad/config.json — never touched; stateBackend survives intact
User-added files not in TEMPLATE_MANIFEST

Self-upgrade path (`selfUpgradeCli()`):

Detects npm/pnpm/yarn via npm_execpath and npm_config_user_agent. Runs:

npm: npm install -g @bradygaster/squad-cli@latest
pnpm: pnpm add -g @bradygaster/squad-cli@latest
yarn: yarn global add @bradygaster/squad-cli@latest Use @insider tag for insider builds.

`compareSemver(a, b)` utility (in upgrade.js):

Returns -1/0/1. Handles pre-release: strips pre-release for base comparison, then treats pre-release as less than release (e.g., 0.9.5-insider.1 < 0.9.5). Can be ported directly if needed in prompt logic.

`.squad/config.json` — What It Holds

{
  "version": 1,
  "stateBackend": "worktree"
}

Other optional fields added by the coordinator at runtime:

defaultModel — global model override for all agent spawns
agentModelOverrides.{agentName} — per-agent model override

The file is read-only from the upgrade path’s perspective. Only the coordinator writes to it (for model preferences).

Version-Check Probe (npm Registry)

Use this one-liner from inside a coordinator prompt to fetch dist-tags:

npm view @bradygaster/squad-cli dist-tags --json

Timeout: 5 seconds. If no response within 5 seconds, abandon and show normal greeting.
On success: extract dist-tags[channel] (e.g., dist-tags["insider"]).
On any error (network failure, registry unreachable, parse error): show normal greeting.

Upstream OS-Specific Cache

The CLI (self-update.ts) writes latest version info to an OS-specific path with a 24h TTL.

One-liner to read the upstream cache:

node -e "const p=require('path'),o=require('os');const b=process.env.APPDATA||(process.platform==='darwin'?p.join(o.homedir(),'Library','Application Support'):p.join(o.homedir(),'.config'));const f=p.join(b,'squad-cli','update-check.json');try{const d=JSON.parse(require('fs').readFileSync(f,'utf8'));const age=Date.now()-d.checkedAt;if(age<86400000)console.log(JSON.stringify(d));else console.log('STALE')}catch{console.log('MISS')}"

Output semantics:

Valid JSON {"latestVersion":"X.Y.Z","checkedAt":N} → cache hit; use latestVersion
STALE → cache expired (older than 24h); treat as no data
MISS → cache missing or corrupt; treat as no data

OS-specific cache path:

Windows: %APPDATA%\squad-cli\update-check.json
Linux: ~/.config/squad-cli/update-check.json
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/squad-cli/update-check.json

Repo-Local Cache Convention: `.squad/.cache/version-check.json`

Used by coordinator for insider/preview channels (the upstream cache only stores latest).

Schema:

{
  "checkedAt": "2026-05-26T14:13:28.492Z",
  "currentVersion": "0.9.6-insider.2",
  "channel": "insider",
  "channelVersion": "0.9.7-insider.1"
}

TTL: 24 hours from checkedAt. Gitignore: .squad/.cache/ is listed in .gitignore — cache files are never committed.

Key File Paths (installed CLI)

Purpose	Path
Version utilities	`dist/cli/core/version.js`
Upgrade logic	`dist/cli/core/upgrade.js`
Init logic	`dist/cli/core/init.js`
Template manifest	`dist/cli/core/templates.js`
Copilot install helper	`dist/cli/copilot-install.js`
squad.agent.md template	`templates/squad.agent.md.template`
Session init reference	`templates/session-init-reference.md`
All templates	`templates/`

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/microsoft/waza, branch main, last pushed 24 September 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

17 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 6 distinct layouts observed: .copilot/skills/*/SKILL.md, .github/skills/*/SKILL.md, */skill.md, .squad/*/skill.md, skills/*/SKILL.md, */SKILL.md.

Authorship

1 of 17 skills are installed into the repository rather than published from it. They are shelved in the closing “Credited skills” part and remain the work of their own authors. A skill counts as credited when its only copy lives under one agent’s dot directory; visible directories, per-agent mirror sets, and skills installable from this repository on skills.sh all count as published.

Duplicates collapsed

3 mirror copies folded into their canonical skill — republished for Squad, Squad Templates. Copies match on content hash and on position once a leading per-agent prefix is stripped, because the same skill is routinely shipped under a dozen agent directories with a dozen different hashes.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 251°, chroma 0.167. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Shifted “17 headings” from h1 to h2 so the skill title is the only h1.

Spec compliance

6 editorial notes across 3 of 17 skills. They are printed in the margin of each skill rather than as errors here.

Squad Version Check — 2 notes
{skill Name} — 2 notes
{skill Name} — 2 notes

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /microsoft/waza.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.