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docs: write the pages in neutral third person

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The docs pages carried 36 attributed opinions — "Matt's own answer",
"his position is", quoted replies from the author. A page is a
technical document about a skill, so the substance of each finding
stays and the attribution goes: "the fix is a direct instruction: …",
"the split comes down to session count".

Quotes from *users* stay, anonymous as they already were — those are
evidence about the skill in the wild rather than the author's view.

Records the rule in .agents/writing-docs.md so new pages don't
reintroduce it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Matt Pocock
2026-08-05 16:56:48 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
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@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ Phase 5 has an escape hatch worth knowing about. The regression test is written
## Common questions
**It fires on quick questions where I just wanted a direct answer.**
This is the most-reported problem with the skill, and it is real. On GPT-5.6-Sol especially, users report it triggering on a plain description of a problem: "the model triggers the rather formal diagnosing-bugs skill instead. It then goes on to construct a reproduction scenario — often building a mock scenario with limited value — before giving me a response or suggestion. This results in considerable reply delays." Four separate people reported the same shape on [issue #578](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/issues/578). Matt's answer there: "It sounds to me like I could improve diagnosing-bugs to use a less heavy approach initially and then graduate to a heavier approach if necessary." That change has not landed. The skill is calibrated against Claude Code's invocation behaviour; a [model](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/model) with a lower activation threshold over-fires it. Until it is graduated, the practical fix is to say what you want ("just answer this, don't diagnose") or to disable model invocation for it in your [harness](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/harness).
This is the most-reported problem with the skill, and it is real. On GPT-5.6-Sol especially, users report it triggering on a plain description of a problem: "the model triggers the rather formal diagnosing-bugs skill instead. It then goes on to construct a reproduction scenario — often building a mock scenario with limited value — before giving me a response or suggestion. This results in considerable reply delays." Four separate people reported the same shape on [issue #578](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/issues/578). The accepted fix is to start with a lighter approach and graduate to the heavier one only where the problem warrants it, but that change has not landed. The skill is calibrated against Claude Code's invocation behaviour; a [model](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/model) with a lower activation threshold over-fires it. Until it is graduated, the practical fix is to say what you want ("just answer this, don't diagnose") or to disable model invocation for it in your [harness](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/harness).
**Can I point it at a codebase and ask where the performance problems are?**
No. It diagnoses one failure you can already name. Its performance branch is for a regression with a symptom — establish a baseline measurement, then bisect, measure first and fix second — not for a proactive sweep. A skill for the proactive version was [proposed and closed](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/issues/431); there is currently no skill for it.