a commander starts its own conversation, instead of being handed one

Starting a commander meant writing a good opening prompt, which is the hard part
of the whole thing — so in practice somebody else wrote it and pasted it in. That
is not a flow, it is a person acting as the intake form.

Now the two decisions that cannot be guessed stay with the owner (a name and a
working directory) and the rest is a button. It sends a brief the MODEL reads —
"I have not told you what I want yet, orient yourself and ask me one question" —
while the transcript shows "Set me up.", which is what a person would have typed.
That split is `effectivePrompt` vs `displayText` and the chat path already had it.

What to ask, in what order, and to read the directory BEFORE asking anything, all
live in the Commanders skill under "When you started yourself". Deliberately not
here: capabilities are re-read from disk every run, so rewording a question costs
nothing, while the same words in commander-block.ts cost a restart each time. The
block carries a pointer and no doctrine.

Orienting first is what makes this work on a real request. Told "automate the
platform deploys", a commander that has read the directory finds `deploy/`, the
previous releases and the deploy skill, and asks whether that is still how you
want it — instead of inventing a scheme next to the one already there.

`sendPrompt` gained an options object rather than a tenth positional parameter.
Nine is already past where a call site reads as a row of undefineds.

The composer stays enabled beside the button: typing your own opener still works,
it just is not the only way in any more.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/servers/api/command-hq/commander-block.ts

@@ -30,6 +30,14 @@ type CommanderBlockParams = {
   userId: number;
   /** Claude's transcript id — what a commander is keyed on everywhere. */
   sessionId: string | null;
+  /**
+   * The owner pressed Start rather than typing an opening message.
+   *
+   * They supplied a name and a working directory and nothing else, so there is no request to act on and
+   * the commander has to run the interview itself. Only ever true on the turn the button sends — a
+   * commander asked something later is an ordinary conversation and must not restart its intake.
+   */
+  selfStarted?: boolean;
 };
 
 export async function commanderBlock(params: CommanderBlockParams): Promise<string | null> {
@@ -66,5 +74,20 @@ export async function commanderBlock(params: CommanderBlockParams): Promise<stri
     'about it — arming before that is arming a guess, and a wrong condition either never fires or fires',
     'constantly and is found out days later. If you were given no paths above, you ARE on your first turn:',
     'that is what their absence means. Ask, and arm once it is agreed.',
+    /*
+      The button case. A pointer, not the interview itself: the questions live in the skill, which is
+      re-read from disk on every run, so rewording one costs nothing. The same words here would cost a
+      `pm2 restart officer` every time — and this file is the wrong home for doctrine that will be
+      edited far more often than the mechanism around it.
+    */
+    ...(params.selfStarted
+      ? [
+          '',
+          '**Nobody has told you what they want yet.** They gave a name and a working directory and',
+          'pressed Start, which is a request to run the interview — not a request to do anything else.',
+          'Read the **Commanders** skill now and follow "When you started yourself": orient in this',
+          'directory first, then open with what you found and ONE question.',
+        ]
+      : []),
   ].join('\n');
 }