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feat: give ask-matt the phase boundary decision tree

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Replaces the two-bullet `Crossing sessions` section with all five options
at a phase boundary — continue, /clear, /handoff, subagent, /compact —
and discloses the ordered tree into a new PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md.

Corrections that come with it:

- /handoff was oversold as the general bridge between context windows.
  It is narrow: a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, or a side
  task forked mid-phase. What it buys is portability.
- /compact is the default at the bottom of the tree, not the first reach.
- Continue and subagent were missing branches entirely.

Context hygiene's escape hatch now says /compact rather than /handoff,
and the smart zone figure moves from ~120k to ~150k tokens.

Resolves the T5 grilling ticket on the v1.2 release map.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Matt Pocock
2026-08-05 10:10:33 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent a621cc4f75
commit fa1e3227fb
4 changed files with 85 additions and 6 deletions
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docs/engineering/ask-matt.md
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@@ -26,6 +26,10 @@ Reach for it whenever you're unsure which skill or flow a situation calls for: y
The idea `ask-matt` gives you to think with is the **flow** — a path *through* the skills rather than a single one. Most work runs along one **main flow** (idea → ship: grill → spec → tickets → implement → review), two **on-ramps** merge onto it (a triage lane for incoming bugs and requests; a codebase-health lane that generates ideas), and everything else is a **standalone** you reach for on its own. Ask a question and you get placed on the right flow, at the right step — not just handed a tool.
## Phase boundaries
The other idea it hands you is the **phase boundary**. A **phase** is a chunk of work inside a session — the grilling, the implementation, the QA — and the boundary between two of them is where you decide what to do with the context you've built up. You have five options: **continue**, **`/clear`**, **`/handoff`**, a **subagent**, or **`/compact`**. `ask-matt` carries the decision tree that orders them, and the two corrections most people need: `/handoff` is narrow — it earns its keep only when something has to *travel* (a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, a side task forked mid-phase) — and `/compact` is the tree's default at the bottom, not its first reach. Reach for the tree at a boundary; mid-phase there's nothing to decide.
## Where it fits
`ask-matt` is the **router** — the standalone map that sits over the whole set. It is the node every other docs page links back to as [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt), so it never sits *in* a chain; it points *into* every chain. From here you'll most often land on [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs), the head of the main flow, or [triage](https://aihero.dev/skills-triage), the on-ramp for work you didn't create. When even the router's own picture is stale, its [Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/ask-matt) is the map of record.