Local Agent Validation

Use this runbook for product, runtime, prompt, skill, plugin, tool, sandbox, or environment-backed credential changes that are not specifically about Slack ingress, Slack message formatting, Slack retries, or Slack OAuth UI. The local agent should be the first manual behavior check for those changes.

Inside this monorepo, pnpm cli -- ... runs Junior from apps/example. Treat that app as the canonical local validation app: it loads the example SOUL, WORLD, local skills, plugin-bundled skills, and normal development env without requiring Slack.

First Check

Confirm the app is configured:

pnpm exec junior check

When you are working inside this monorepo, use the source CLI wrapper instead:

pnpm cli -- check

Run one local turn:

pnpm exec junior chat -p "Describe the behavior I just changed in one sentence."

From this monorepo, run the same check through the source CLI:

pnpm cli -- chat -p "Describe the behavior I just changed in one sentence."

The command should print a Junior response and exit with status 0. If it reports missing model or provider credentials, refresh or add the required environment variables and rerun the same prompt.

-p uses a fresh local conversation for each invocation. Use interactive mode when you need to validate multi-turn context.

Example App Checks

Use the example app skills when you need to prove local skill and plugin discovery, not just a plain model response:

pnpm cli -- chat -p "/example-local Confirm the example app local skill is available."

pnpm cli -- chat -p "/example-bundle-help Explain where this plugin-bundled skill is discovered from and whether it supports jr-rpc issue-credential."

The first command should use the app-local example-local skill. The second should report that the skill is discovered from app/plugins/example-bundle/skills and that example-bundle is bundle-only without credential issuance support.

Conversation Check

Use interactive mode when the change depends on context across turns:

pnpm exec junior chat

From this monorepo:

pnpm cli -- chat

Send two prompts that exercise the changed behavior, then type /exit. The second response should use context from the first response without needing a Slack channel or thread.

What This Proves

Local validation proves that the shared agent path can run without Slack:

• the prompt reaches the agent runtime
• the local destination is not Slack-shaped
• tools and plugins run with the configured local environment
• visible conversation context survives within one interactive local process
• terminal delivery succeeds for text replies

Keep the usual focused tests for deterministic contracts. Use Slack-specific tests only when the change is about Slack event routing, Slack outbound payloads, Slack markdown, Slack files, Slack retry behavior, or Slack authorization UI. User-bound OAuth and credential issuance flows are not validated by local chat because the local agent runs as the local-cli system actor with authorization prompts disabled.

Failure Checks

If local validation fails, use the first matching symptom:

Symptom	First check
Missing model credentials	Refresh env with pnpm dev:env, then rerun the same prompt.
Missing provider credentials	Configure the plugin/provider env required by the changed path.
Context resets between commands	Expected; use one interactive junior chat process for context.
File-send UX needs validation	Local validation cannot verify it; the local adapter has no file-send tool.
Slack-specific behavior changed	Use the Slack specs and Slack integration tests instead.

Next Step

After local behavior works, run the focused commands from Testing for the files you changed.