Goals

A Goal keeps Qwen Code working across turns until a stated condition is met. Set one with /goal <objective>; after each turn an independent verifier checks the transcript, and the session keeps going until the objective is verified complete, verified blocked, paused, or cleared.

Commands

Command	Behavior
/goal	Show the current Goal and its status.
/goal <objective>	Create a Goal, or replace the active one.
/goal set <objective>	Same as above, explicit form.
/goal edit <objective>	Revise the active Goal's wording without starting over.
/goal pause / resume	Stop or continue the loop without losing the Goal.
/goal clear	Remove the Goal.
/goal-draft <intent>	Have the objective written for you before you set it (below).

Creating, editing, or resuming a Goal requires a trusted workspace (/trust). Headless usage is covered in Headless Mode.

How a Goal is judged

The verifier never runs commands or reads files on its own. It only sees what is already in the transcript:

• Visible assistant output and tool results count as evidence. The objective text, your prompts, and the model's hidden reasoning do not.
• Printed text proves only that text was printed. A claim that tests pass, a file changed, or a remote is updated needs the corresponding tool result in the transcript.
• A claim that you confirmed, chose, or approved something needs a real message from you; the verifier rejects proposals that assume it.
• When evidence is missing the verdict is "not yet", not "done". A condition nobody can evidence keeps the loop running until a limit stops it.

So the objective has to make the agent produce evidence: run the named check and show the decisive output.

Writing a good objective

Put these into the objective, in this order:

Part	What to write
Outcome:	One sentence: what is true when this is done.
Done when:	Numbered, binary checks. At least one names a command and its expected exit code or output line, and asks for that line to be pasted.
Must not:	Files not to touch, tests or thresholds not to weaken, irreversible actions (push, delete, publish) not to take.
Budget:	When to give up: "stop as blocked after 20 turns" or a time limit.
On block:	What to report when stuck, and which decision a human must make.
Context:	Only facts the agent cannot find in the workspace: branch, environment, earlier decisions.

Keep it to one objective and roughly under 1,200 characters. /goal set and /goal edit collapse newlines to spaces, so number the items rather than relying on line breaks.

Weak	Why it fails	Stronger
make checkout faster	No threshold, no check.	Outcome: checkout p95 is below 250 ms. Done when: 1) npm run bench:checkout exits 0 and prints p95 < 250 (paste the line); 2) npm test exits 0. Must not: change the benchmark or skip tests. Budget: stop as blocked after 20 turns.
clean up the auth module	"Clean" has no evidence.	Ask what would be observable: zero lint warnings in src/auth, a coverage threshold, a file count.
ship the release	Irreversible, and needs a human decision.	Narrow to a checkable pre-release state (tag exists, npm run release:dry-run exits 0) and put "do not publish" in Must not.
after I confirm the design	The verifier cannot see a confirmation that never happened.	Move it to On block: as the decision a human must make.

Let /goal-draft write it

/goal-draft <what you want done> is a bundled skill that does the above for you. It checks whether the request is a Goal at all, reads the workspace for the real test and lint commands instead of guessing, asks at most one round of multiple-choice questions when the answer changes the check or the scope, drafts the objective in the format above, runs the self-check, and prints a /goal set … line you can run as-is. It never starts the work itself and never sets the Goal on your behalf.

Pass an existing objective to tighten it: /goal-draft all tests pass and the lint is clean.

The skill is instructed to be read-only, and only its non-mutating tools are auto-approved (get_goal, read_file, glob, grep_search). ask_user_question is deliberately not auto-approved, so its question dialog is shown before the skill drafts from your answers. Like other bundled skills, a project or personal skill named goal-draft overrides it, and skills.disabled can turn it off. See Skills for how bundled skills are discovered.