rome-os/rome/app-tagline-backfill

App Tagline Backfill

Apps created before tagline existed share a card with an empty description. This skill adds one sentence to each such app, commits it, and reinstalls so the card is redrawn. It edits nothing else.

Modes

• AUTO — the caller (the coding app's agent-turn-finished hook) hands

you the absolute source roots to process. Nobody is watching: skip the confirmation step, process every listed app, and finish with the report.

• MANUAL — the guardian asked. Discover the apps yourself (step 1), show

the draft table (step 3), and write only after they approve or edit it.

Step 1: Discover (MANUAL only)

LOCK="$HOME/.rome/${ROME_PROFILE:-default}/apps.lock.json"
node -e '
  const lock = JSON.parse(require("fs").readFileSync(process.argv[1], "utf8"));
  for (const [id, e] of Object.entries(lock.apps)) {
    if (e.source?.mode === "source" && e.enabled && e.state === "installed") console.log(id, e.source.path);
  }
' "$LOCK"

For each printed root, an app qualifies when <root>/app.yaml has a web: block and no tagline: line:

grep -q '^web:' "$ROOT/app.yaml" && ! grep -q '^tagline:' "$ROOT/app.yaml" && echo "$ROOT"

Skip everything else and say why in the report: appstore entries (read-only bundles, the author owns them), first-party apps (shipped with Rome, already done), apps without web: (no card), apps that already have a tagline.

Step 2: Draft one sentence per app

Read name, description, and README.md (if present) under the root. Write the tagline by the same rule app_creation/REFERENCE.md gives:

• One sentence, at most 80 characters (40 for CJK). No line breaks, no double quotes.
• Lead with what the user gets. No implementation details, jargon, or

acronyms. Read it like an App Store subtitle.

• Do not copy description — it is written for agents, not people.

Good: Track every mortgage rate that matters to you, updated daily. Bad: A cron-driven scraper that stores rates in SQLite. (mechanism, not benefit) Bad: Mortgage Monitor (a name, not a sentence)

Step 3: Confirm (MANUAL only)

Show a table id | name | tagline and wait. Apply any edits the guardian makes. In AUTO mode go straight to step 4.

Step 4: Write, commit, reinstall, verify — one app at a time

First make sure nobody is mid-edit in that repo. A source install packs the whole working tree, so uncommitted changes would be deployed, and the rollback below would erase edits to app.yaml. Skip a dirty app and report it:

cd "$ROOT"
git status --porcelain --untracked-files=no   # must print nothing; otherwise skip this app

Then append the line. Top-level key order does not matter in YAML; the quoted heredoc keeps apostrophes and other shell characters in the sentence intact, and the blank line keeps it off a last line that has no trailing newline.

cat >> app.yaml <<'EOF'
 
tagline: "REPLACE WITH THE SENTENCE"
EOF
git add app.yaml && git commit -o app.yaml -m "chore: add share-card tagline"

-o app.yaml commits only that file, so anything the guardian left staged in the repo stays out of this commit and the rollback below stays one file.

Then reinstall through the daemon (the same call app_creation uses; always pass source explicitly):

system:app_management { op: "install", source: { mode: "source", path: "<absolute ROOT>" } }

Verify the packed manifest carries the line:

grep -n '^tagline:' "$ROOT/.rome/artifact/app.yaml"

If the install fails, roll that app back and continue with the next one:

git -C "$ROOT" checkout HEAD~1 -- app.yaml && git -C "$ROOT" commit -o app.yaml -m "chore: revert share-card tagline"

The reinstall triggers the card to be redrawn; nothing else is needed.

Step 5: Report

List, in this order: apps updated (id and the tagline written), apps skipped (with the reason, including "uncommitted changes"), apps that failed (with the error and that the commit was reverted). In AUTO mode this report is your final message; the hook stores it. In MANUAL mode show it to the guardian.