tiltup_skill

Overview

This skill starts a Tilt development environment inside a tmux session, monitors bootstrap until the system is healthy, and guides iterative fixes to Tiltfile and related config errors without masking root causes. It enforces principles that avoid hard-coded fallbacks, sleep loops, or wrapper workarounds so failures remain visible and are fixed at the source.

How this skill works

The skill checks for an existing tmux session and required env/bootstrap files, then launches tilt (or silo up for silo projects) in a dedicated tmux window. It polls Tilt UI resources for convergence, classifying resource states and watching for runtime or update errors. When an error is detected, it collects recent logs, inspects Tiltfile and manifests, and recommends config-level fixes. After edits, Tilt live-reloads and the skill re-polls to verify progress.

When to use it

• Starting a project dev environment with Tilt and ensuring clean bootstrap
• Debugging Tiltfile errors or resource startup failures
• Enforcing config-first fixes instead of adding runtime workarounds
• Automating Tilt startup inside tmux for consistent developer workflows
• Monitoring resource convergence to detect faulty manifests or configs

Best practices

• Fix the source config (Tiltfile, Dockerfile, k8s manifests, helm values) instead of adding shell workarounds
• Avoid hard-coding ports, image tags, paths, hostnames, or adding silent fallbacks
• Express ordering and dependencies declaratively with resource_deps() and image_deps
• Use Tilt readiness settings and probes rather than custom polling or sleep loops
• Edit Tiltfile in-place and rely on Tilt live-reload; restart tilt only for version or cluster changes

Example use cases

• Open a project and launch tilt in tmux so the team has a reproducible dev window
• Detect a stuck resource that reports pending or error and trace it to a missing env var in silo.toml
• Resolve a port conflict by fixing the service port source rather than picking a different port
• Iteratively fix a Tiltfile binding or manifest bug and confirm resource convergence without restarting tilt
• Run tilt up in CI-like developer setups where tmux keeps the process attached and logs accessible