Shepherd Driver

by microsoft

Shepherd Driver is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by microsoft in apm.

3.5K stars324 forkson microsoft/apmAdded 2026/08/16+1% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/15

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

ai-agentsclaude-codecodex-clicontext-engineeringgithub-copilotpackage-managerprompt-engineering

Install in seconds

Install Shepherd Driver

Copy Shepherd Driver into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/microsoft/apm/tree/main/packages/shepherd-driver ~/.claude/skills/shepherd-driver

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/apm.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: packages/shepherd-driver/SKILL.md in microsoft/apm
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/shepherd-driver
Collection: One of 21 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Shepherd Driver does

Shepherd Driver drives one existing pull request to a mergeable state: classifies review, runs the review panel, folds recommendations, pushes, watches CI, and resolves conflicts under caps. Use it as the composed per-PR stage in a batch bug shepherd or issue autopilot orchestrator, not standalone.

Shepherd Driver is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Shepherd Driver comes from a repository tagged ai-agents, claude-code, codex-cli, context-engineering and github-copilot.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

shepherd-driver - per-PR drive-to-merge convergence loop

This SKILL.md is the natural-language module derived from a genesis design packet; refactors re-run the genesis skill from that packet.

This skill is a COMPOSED BUILDING BLOCK, not a user-facing entrypoint. It was extracted (genesis R3 EXTRACT) from batch-bug-shepherd when a second consumer (apm-issue-autopilot) needed the same per-PR convergence loop. Both orchestrators COMPOSE this skill; neither re-implements the loop. It in turn COMPOSES the apm-review-panel skill for the review pass -- it does NOT re-implement panel review.

Boundary (what this skill does and does NOT do)

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Shepherd Driver

What else does microsoft publish alongside Shepherd Driver?
Shepherd Driver is one of 21 skills that DirSkills catalogs from microsoft/apm, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include APM Issue Autopilot, APM Review Panel and APM Spec Guardian. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Shepherd Driver does, and is maintained by microsoft in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the microsoft/apm page.
How does Shepherd Driver compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Shepherd Driver ranks #592 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Shepherd Driver against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.