/pm:status runs the conductor engine’s render command, then reads PROJECT.md and summarizes the project’s position: what’s actively being built, what’s paused and why, what’s queued next, and how many epics exist per lane. It’s the fastest way to re-orient yourself at the start of a session or after any state-changing operation.
What the briefing shows
NOW
The active epic with its lane icon, priority badge, and live story progress derived from checkbox counts in the epic’s
tasks.md file. If no epic is active, this section prompts you to triage.DETOUR STACK
All paused epics in LIFO order, each annotated with the reason it was pushed onto the stack. Any frame with a pending reconcile-on-resume gate is flagged with ⚠ to remind you to reconcile before resuming.
NEXT UP
The top-priority
queued epics in P0 → P3 order. Blocked epics appear in this list but name their blocker explicitly — the dependency is surfaced rather than silently hidden.LANE COUNTS
A snapshot of how many epics exist across each lane (
openspec, superpowers, claude-code, decision, external) broken down by status, so you can see the overall shape of the backlog at a glance.TRACKER SYNC
When an external tracker is configured, this section lists any currently active epics that are missing an
externalId. These are candidates for /pm:sync or manual tracker linkage.When to run it
Run/pm:status at the start of every session to confirm where you left off, after /pm:resume to verify the detour stack contracted correctly, after /pm:sync to see newly registered epics, and any time you want to re-orient mid-session. The SessionStart hook fires it automatically when Claude Code opens your project — running it manually just forces a fresh render at any point you choose.
Story progress counts come from each epic’s openspec/changes/<id>/tasks.md checkboxes in real time. If the counts look stale, the tasks.md file is the source of truth — /pm:status will recount on the next render.