docs: stop listing grill-with-docs and domain-modeling as alternatives

grill-with-docs is a shim that runs grilling using domain-modeling, so
the two are one route, not two.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

.agents/writing-docs.md

@@ -12,14 +12,12 @@ There is no H1 — the published page takes its title from the slug.
 
 ## Page structure
 
-Fill the template below. The **fixed frame** (source link, `## What it does`, `## When to reach for it`, `## Where it fits`) appears on every page. The **adaptable middle** — `## Prerequisites` and the free-form substance sections — carries only what this particular skill earns; delete the rest.
+Fill the template below. The **fixed frame** (`## What it does`, `## When to reach for it`, `## Where it fits`) appears on every page. The **adaptable middle** — `## Prerequisites` and the free-form substance sections — carries only what this particular skill earns; delete the rest.
 
 **A page carries no install commands.** The ai-hero page template renders the install widget itself — a copy button, the single-skill command, the whole-set command, and the update line — above the body. A page that also writes them out shows the reader the same command twice, and the two copies drift: the hand-written pair on every page went stale against the widget beside it. Install wording is a property of the site, not of the page. If it needs changing, change it in ai-hero; the canonical wording lives in [the install block](./install-block.md).
 
 <page-template>
 
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/<bucket>/<name>)
-
 ## What it does
 
 One or two plain-language paragraphs. Lead with the skill's one-sentence job, then state the **defining constraint** — the single fact that makes this skill behave differently from the obvious default (for `to-spec`: it does not interview the user again, it synthesises what is already known). Write it as a plain declarative sentence — never a labelled aside like "The defining constraint:" or "The key thing:"; the formula reads as filler. This line is the most valuable on the page; never omit it.
@@ -64,7 +62,7 @@ Always present. Situate the skill in the system in a sentence or two:
 ## Done when
 
 - The page exists at `docs/<bucket>/<name>.md`, and no stale page survives a rename or bucket move.
-- The source link names the correct bucket and skill, and the page writes no install command of its own.
+- The page carries no source link and writes no install command of its own.
 - `## What it does` states the defining constraint, as plain prose rather than a labelled aside.
 - `## When to reach for it` states invocation mode and the trigger boundary.
 - `## Where it fits` names the role and links to `ask-matt`.

.changeset/docs-grill-me-pass.md

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+---
+"mattpocock-skills": patch
+---
+
+Rewrite the `grill-me` docs page around what people actually get wrong.
+
+The old page explained the mechanism — rounds, the frontier, the decision tree — and stopped there. Every recurring question from the last few months went unanswered on it: which of the three grilling skills to reach for, how many questions is normal, what to do when a question can't be answered by talking, and whether to start a fresh session before writing the spec.
+
+The rewrite keeps the mechanism short and spends the page on the judgement calls instead:
+
+- **Sibling routing** is now a three-way list keyed on what you have in front of you — no codebase, a codebase, or too big for one session — rather than a paragraph.
+- **"It's a conversation, not an interview"** names passivity as the main failure mode. A session where you answer "agreed" forty times produces a plan you didn't write and can't defend.
+- **"Grillable and ungrillable"** gives readers the move for a question that talking cannot settle: stop, prototype, come back. This is where long sessions come from.
+- **A "Common questions" section** answers the six highest-volume ones directly, including how to restore one-question-at-a-time and why you should not clear context before `to-spec`.
+- **"It's working if"** added, led by the sharpest signal: if you never disagreed, you didn't need the session.
+
+Also drops the "plan mode" ambiguity by saying plainly to leave it off.

.changeset/docs-writing-for-agents-pass.md

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+"mattpocock-skills": patch
+---
+
+Rewrite the `writing-for-agents` docs page around what people actually get wrong.
+
+The old page was a table of contents for the skill: the two loads, then a bullet per lever. It answered none of the questions the rename and the AMA threads have been generating for months — where `writing-great-skills` went, whether the agent or the human is doing the writing, why you shouldn't just ask Claude to write the skill for you, and how you know when a document is done.
+
+The rewrite keeps the levers to one compact list and spends the page on the judgement calls instead:
+
+- **The defining constraint is now stated up front** — the default move is deletion, not explanation, because the reader has already read everything. This is also the answer to "why not let the model write it", so it leads.
+- **The scope is stated as a test**, not a list: does an agent read this document and act? Skills, `AGENTS.md`, specs, tickets and runtime prompts all pass it.
+- **A "Common questions" section** answers the nine highest-volume ones directly, including the rename, the "streamline" failure where an agent trims for length and cuts behaviour, whether to rewrite documents per model, the skill that only works on the one task it was built from, and the leading-word question from non-native English speakers.
+- **"It's working if"** added, led by the sharpest signal: the document gets shorter as it gets better, and duplication is the most reliable sign it was never tested.
+- **`Where it fits`** says plainly that it has no chain neighbour: it sits underneath the set rather than beside one skill, and the documents the other skills leave behind are the text it governs.

.changeset/wait-what.md

@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@
 "mattpocock-skills": minor
 ---
 
-Add **`wait-what`** — a fire extinguisher for model verbosity. Fire it the moment a message doesn't land, and the agent re-pitches it: a little context, ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English, and the ubiquitous language from your `CONTEXT.md`. User-invoked, three lines long.
+Add **`wait-what`** — a one-word corrective for model verbosity. Type it the moment a message doesn't land, and the agent re-pitches it: a little context, ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English, and the ubiquitous language from your `CONTEXT.md`. User-invoked, three lines long.
 
 The mechanism is the name. Concision skills fail by growing — a 400-line skill still leaves the model verbose — so this one is a single precise leading word and nothing else. Names that describe the *output* (`/tldr`, `/no-fluff`) make the model clip words and lose you further; naming the *listener's* state asks for both halves at once, fewer words **and** the context you were missing. It also reuses the leading words already in your global `CLAUDE.md`, so the skill, `CLAUDE.md` and every `CONTEXT.md` reach for the same tokens.
 
-It's the extinguisher, not the sprinkler. The cure for jargon is a shared language built upfront with `/grill-with-docs`; this is the in-the-moment corrective for when you don't have one yet.
+It repairs one message; it doesn't prevent the next one. The cure for jargon is a shared language built upfront with `/grill-with-docs`; this is what you reach for when you don't have one yet.

docs/engineering/ask-matt.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/ask-matt)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `ask-matt` is the router over the skills in this repo. You describe the situation you're in; it tells you which skill or flow fits and in what order to run them.
@@ -22,4 +20,4 @@ The other idea it hands you is the **phase boundary**. A **phase** is a chunk of
 
 ## 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.
+`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, the skill itself is the map of record.

docs/engineering/code-review.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/code-review)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `code-review` reviews the diff between `HEAD` and a fixed point you supply — a commit, branch, tag, or merge-base — along two separate axes: **Standards** (does the code follow this repo's documented conventions?) and **Spec** (does it implement what the originating issue or spec asked for?). It runs each axis as its own parallel sub-agent and reports them side by side. It never merges or re-ranks the two sets of findings — keeping them separate is the whole point, because a change can pass one axis and fail the other, and a single blended verdict lets one mask the other.

docs/engineering/codebase-design.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/codebase-design)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `codebase-design` gives you a shared, precise vocabulary for designing **deep modules** — a lot of behaviour hidden behind a small interface, placed at a clean seam, testable through that interface.

docs/engineering/diagnosing-bugs.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/diagnosing-bugs)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `diagnosing-bugs` runs a disciplined diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions — building a repro, minimising it, ranking hypotheses, instrumenting, then fixing with a regression test.

docs/engineering/domain-modeling.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/domain-modeling)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `domain-modeling` builds and sharpens a project's **ubiquitous language** as you design — challenging fuzzy terms, stress-testing relationships with concrete scenarios, and writing the glossary and decisions down the moment they crystallise.

docs/engineering/grill-with-docs.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/grill-with-docs)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `grill-with-docs` interviews you relentlessly about a plan or design, a round of questions at a time, until you and the agent reach a shared understanding — and it writes the vocabulary and decisions down as you go.

docs/engineering/implement.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/implement)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `implement` builds the work described in a spec or a set of tickets — driving it through test-driven development, typechecking, and the full test suite, then handing off to review and committing to the current branch.

docs/engineering/improve-codebase-architecture.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/improve-codebase-architecture)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `improve-codebase-architecture` scans a codebase for **deepening opportunities** — places where a shallow module (an interface nearly as complex as the thing it hides) could become a deep one — presents them as a self-contained visual HTML report, then grills through whichever one you pick.

docs/engineering/prototype.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/prototype)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `prototype` builds a small, disposable program whose only job is to answer one design question — does this state model feel right, or what should this UI look like.

docs/engineering/research.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/research)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `research` answers a question by reading the sources that own the answer and leaving a cited Markdown file behind. It works only from **primary sources** — official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs — never a secondary write-up of them, so what it saves is traceable back to something authoritative rather than a summary of a summary.

docs/engineering/resolving-merge-conflicts.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/resolving-merge-conflicts)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `resolving-merge-conflicts` works through an in-progress git merge or rebase conflict, hunk by hunk, and finishes the operation — resolved, checked, and committed.

docs/engineering/setup-matt-pocock-skills.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/setup-matt-pocock-skills)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `setup-matt-pocock-skills` teaches one repo how the engineering skills should behave in it — where issues live, what the triage labels are called, and where the domain docs sit — and records those answers as **config** the other skills read.

docs/engineering/tdd.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/tdd)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `tdd` builds a feature or fixes a bug test-first, one behaviour at a time, driving the code out through a red-green loop.

docs/engineering/to-spec.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/to-spec)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `to-spec` turns the current conversation and your codebase understanding into a spec, then publishes it to your issue tracker.

docs/engineering/to-tickets.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `to-tickets` breaks a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of **tickets** — each a tracer-bullet vertical slice — and publishes them to your configured tracker, with every ticket declaring the tickets that block it.

docs/engineering/triage.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/triage)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `triage` moves issues on your project's tracker through a small **state machine** of triage roles — categorise them, verify the claim, grill them into shape if needed, and leave a ready-for-agent brief.

docs/engineering/wayfinder.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/wayfinder)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `wayfinder` takes an effort too big for one agent session — wrapped in fog, where the way from here to the goal isn't visible yet — and charts it as a **shared map** of **decision tickets** on your issue tracker, then resolves them one at a time until the way is clear. It **plans, it doesn't do**: every ticket resolves a decision — a question to settle, not a slice of a build to execute — and the map is done when nothing is left to decide before someone goes and builds the thing — so it produces decisions, not deliverables.

docs/engineering/wizard.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/wizard)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `wizard` generates an interactive bash script that walks a human, step by step, through a manual procedure that's tedious to do by hand and tedious to re-explain to an agent every time — wiring up third-party services, running a one-off migration, moving a project from state A to state B. It opens each URL, says what to click and copy, captures what comes back, and writes it where it belongs.

docs/productivity/grill-me.md

@@ -1,23 +1,76 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/grill-me)
-
 ## What it does
 
-`grill-me` runs a relentless interview about a plan or design, walking every branch of the decision tree until you and the agent reach a **shared understanding**.
+`grill-me` takes a **loose idea** and interviews you until it has real decisions in it. You do not need a worked-out plan to start — producing one is what the session is for. It asks in **rounds**: each round is the whole **frontier** — every question whose prerequisites you have already settled — so you are never asked something that hinges on an answer it hasn't heard yet.
 
-It asks in **rounds** and waits. A round is the whole **frontier** — every decision whose prerequisites are already settled — put to you as one numbered list, so you're never asked something that hinges on an answer the agent hasn't heard yet. Where a question can be answered by reading the codebase, it goes and reads rather than asking. Each question comes with the agent's own recommended answer, so you are reacting to a proposal, not staring at a blank prompt.
+It is **stateless**. It writes no files and leaves no workspace behind. The only thing it leaves is a sharper version of the idea, in your own head.
 
 ## When to reach for it
 
-You invoke this by typing `/grill-me` — the agent won't reach for it on its own.
+You invoke this by typing `/grill-me` — the agent won't reach for it on its own. Start it in a **fresh conversation**, not on top of a plan you already had an agent write.
 
-Reach for it before you build, when a plan feels roughly right but you can sense unresolved decisions hiding in it — the moment you want the soft spots found and forced into the open. If you want that same interrogation to also leave a paper trail of ADRs and a glossary behind, use [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs) instead. And if the effort is too big to hold in one session and the route to the goal is still foggy — a greenfield project, a huge feature build — start further upstream with [wayfinder](https://aihero.dev/skills-wayfinder), which charts it as a map of decisions first and then merges back into this flow.
+Reach for it as soon as you have an idea worth taking seriously — a feature, a product direction, a business call, a piece of writing — and long before you have worked out what it involves. Vagueness is not a reason to wait; it is the thing the session eats. If you can already specify the thing precisely, you don't need to grill it.
 
-## The decision tree
+Which of the three grilling skills you want depends on what is in front of you:
 
-The session walks the plan as a tree of decisions, settling a parent decision before the choices that hang off it. Your answers reshape the tree and push the frontier outward, so the next round asks whatever they unblocked. The point is not to reach agreement quickly; it is to make every implicit call explicit, so nothing important is left silently assumed. You come out the other side with a plan whose branches have all been visited.
+- **Anything, anywhere** — `grill-me`. It needs no repo and writes no files, and the subject doesn't have to be code.
+- **A codebase to align against** — [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs). The same interview, but stateful: it reads your code and keeps what it learns in `CONTEXT.md` and ADRs.
+- **Too big for one session** — [wayfinder](https://aihero.dev/skills-wayfinder). It charts the effort as a map and runs grilling sessions inside it.
 
-`grill-me` is **stateless**: it writes nothing and leaves no workspace behind. It runs anywhere, and the only artifact is the sharpened understanding in the conversation itself. That is the deliberate contrast with [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs), which captures the same interview as durable ADRs and a glossary.
+Leave plan mode off. Plan mode primes the agent to rush toward producing a plan, which is the opposite of staying in inquiry.
+
+## It's a conversation, not an interview
+
+The skill asks the questions, but **you** own the scope. That is the part people miss, and it separates a session that turns an idea into decisions from one that produces confident nonsense.
+
+The failure mode is **passivity** — answering "agreed, agreed, agreed" for forty questions and coming out with a plan the agent wrote and you nodded at. It feels productive because it was long. Nothing was actually decided, and the result carries a certainty it hasn't earned.
+
+Being active means steering. Push back on a question pitched beneath the fidelity you need. Say when the scope is drifting. Answer "I don't know" and mean it. This skill is built to aid an engineer, not to replace one: what comes out tracks the quality of your answers, not the number of questions asked.
+
+The opposite error is real but rarer — staying in the interview so long you never reach code.
+
+## Grillable and ungrillable
+
+Some questions can be answered by talking. Others can't, and no amount of grilling will get you there.
+
+"One long form or three pages?" and "how should this interaction feel?" are **ungrillable** — they need something to react to. When you hit one, stop grilling. Build the throwaway version with [prototype](https://aihero.dev/skills-prototype), look at it, then come back and answer in one line.
+
+Talking your way through an ungrillable question is where sessions balloon. The agent keeps rephrasing, you keep guessing, and the scope grows to fill the uncertainty.
+
+## It's working if
+
+- You disagree with something. A session with no pushback from you is a session you didn't need.
+- Questions arrive in a few rounds rather than one long drip, and later rounds clearly build on what you said earlier.
+- You end up somewhere you didn't expect, because a question surfaced a decision you had been making implicitly.
+- At the end you could defend each choice to someone who wasn't there.
+
+## Common questions
+
+**How many questions should I expect, and how do I know when it ends?**
+Count rounds, not questions. Forty-six questions across four rounds is an ordinary session. It ends when the frontier is empty — every branch visited, nothing left silently assumed.
+
+**It asked me two hundred questions. What went wrong?**
+Usually the scope was too large. Ask the agent to break the work into smaller pieces first, then grill each one. Very long sessions also drift into the **dumb zone**, where the context window is full enough that the questions get worse.
+
+**Can I go back to one question at a time?**
+Yes. Add this to your global `CLAUDE.md`:
+
+```
+When grilling, ask one question at a time.
+```
+
+**What if I genuinely don't know the answer?**
+Say so. "I don't know" is a real answer, and a question you can't answer is usually a sign to prototype rather than to guess.
+
+**Do I start a fresh session before writing the spec?**
+No. The value of the session is the context you just built. Hand the same conversation straight to [to-spec](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-spec).
+
+**Does the model matter?**
+More than for most skills. Grilling leans on the model's own sense of how systems break, so give it your best one. Implementation mostly follows context and tolerates a cheaper model.
 
 ## Where it fits
 
-`grill-me` is a reach-for-it-anytime standalone — the pre-build stress test you run whenever a plan needs hardening. It is the stateless, user-invoked front door to the [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling) primitive; its closest neighbour is [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs), the stateful sibling that runs the same interview but additionally records the decisions as ADRs and a glossary. If the outcome is a spec you want written down, hand off to [to-spec](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-spec), which synthesises the settled understanding into a spec without re-interviewing you. When you're unsure which flow fits, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.
+`grill-me` is a **standalone you can run anywhere, on anything**. Being stateless is what makes it portable: no repo, no workspace, no setup, and no assumption that the idea is even about software. People point it at business decisions, at writing, at what to do next — anything that won't sit still in their head.
+
+That portability is the whole difference from [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs), which runs the same interview but reads a codebase to align against and records what it learns as `CONTEXT.md` and ADRs. Both sit on the [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling) primitive; `grill-me` is the user-invoked front door that carries nothing with it.
+
+If what you grilled does turn out to be software, you can hand the same conversation to [to-spec](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-spec) and carry on into the build flow — an option, not the point of the skill. When you're unsure which flow fits, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.

docs/productivity/grilling.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/grilling)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `grilling` is the relentless interview that stress-tests a plan or design before you build it. It maps the plan as a **design tree** — every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it — and works that tree in **rounds** until you and the agent share the same understanding.

docs/productivity/handoff.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/handoff)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `handoff` compacts the current conversation into a **handoff document** — a single write-up a fresh agent can read to pick up the work where you left off.

docs/productivity/teach.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/teach)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `teach` turns the current directory into a standing teaching workspace and teaches you one topic across many sessions — devising short, beautiful, interactive lessons tied to *why* you want to learn.

docs/productivity/to-questionnaire.md

@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/to-questionnaire)
-
 ## What it does
 
 `to-questionnaire` turns a decision you can't settle on your own into a **questionnaire** — a Markdown document you hand to the one person who holds what you're missing, to fill in async or work through together in a meeting.

docs/productivity/wait-what.md

@@ -1,38 +1,36 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/wait-what)
-
 ## What it does
 
-`wait-what` is the fire extinguisher for a message that didn't land. You fire it the moment you lose the thread, and the agent re-pitches what it just said: a little of the context you were missing, plain English, and the vocabulary from your project's `CONTEXT.md`.
+`wait-what` is what you type when a message didn't land. The agent then re-pitches what it just said. It adds the context you were missing, writes in plain English, and uses the vocabulary from your project's `CONTEXT.md`.
 
-It is three lines long, and that is the design rather than an unfinished draft. Skills that fight verbosity fail by growing — a four-hundred-line concision skill still leaves the model verbose, because the model reads the volume, not the plea. This one carries a single precise leading word and nothing else.
+The skill is three lines long. That is the design, not an unfinished draft. Skills that fight verbosity fail by growing: a four-hundred-line concision skill still leaves the model verbose, because the model reads the volume, not the plea. This one carries a single precise leading word and nothing else.
 
 ## When to reach for it
 
-You invoke this by typing `/wait-what` — the agent won't reach for it on its own, and it shouldn't: only you know when you stopped following.
+You invoke it by typing `/wait-what`. The agent will not reach for it on its own, and it shouldn't. Only you know when you stopped following.
 
-Reach for it the second you notice you're skimming — the agent has drifted into jargon it invented, stacked five acronyms, or explained a decision whose premise you never saw. It's a one-shot corrective on the conversation you're already in. To stop the jargon arriving in the first place, use [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs) instead, which builds the shared language upfront.
+Use it the second you notice you're skimming. The agent has drifted into jargon it invented, stacked five acronyms, or explained a decision whose premise you never saw. It fixes the conversation you're already in. To stop the jargon arriving at all, use [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs), which builds the shared language upfront.
 
 ## The name is the mechanism
 
-The leading word is **wait**. Not "be concise" — an instruction about the agent's output, which the model satisfies by clipping words and losing you further. **Wait** is about *your* state: it says comprehension failed here. An agent that hears "be brief" writes telegrams. An agent that hears "wait, you lost me" backs up and explains.
+The leading word is **wait**. "Be concise" is an instruction about the agent's output, and the model obeys it by clipping words and losing you further. **Wait** is about *your* state. It says comprehension failed here. An agent that hears "be brief" writes telegrams. An agent that hears "wait, you lost me" backs up and explains.
 
-That distinction is the whole skill. Every popular fix for verbosity — `/tldr`, `/no-fluff`, `/talk-normal` — names the *output*, so the model over-corrects into a caveman register that's shorter and no clearer. Naming the *listener* asks for both halves at once: fewer words **and** the context you were missing.
+That difference is the whole skill. Every popular fix for verbosity names the *output*: `/tldr`, `/no-fluff`, `/talk-normal`. The model over-corrects into a caveman register that is shorter and no clearer. Naming the *listener* asks for both halves at once: fewer words **and** the context you were missing.
 
-The re-pitch is deliberately vague about its own scope. It says re-pitch **that**, not "that last message", because what lost you is usually bigger than one paragraph — the agent decides how far back to go.
+The skill says re-pitch **that**, not "that last message". What lost you is usually bigger than one paragraph, so the agent decides how far back to go.
 
 ## It plugs into the language you already have
 
-The body reuses the leading words already sitting in your global `CLAUDE.md` and your project's `CONTEXT.md`: ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English for the register, ubiquitous language for the nouns. Skill, `CLAUDE.md` and `CONTEXT.md` reach for the same tokens, so firing it isn't a new instruction — it's a reminder of one the agent already agreed to.
+The body reuses the leading words already in your global `CLAUDE.md` and your project's `CONTEXT.md`. ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English sets the register. The ubiquitous language supplies the nouns. The skill, `CLAUDE.md` and `CONTEXT.md` reach for the same tokens, so invoking it is not a new instruction. It is a reminder of one the agent already agreed to.
 
-If you have no `CONTEXT.md`, it still works; you just lose the domain-vocabulary half.
+If you have no `CONTEXT.md`, the skill still works. You lose only the domain-vocabulary half.
 
 ## It's working if
 
 - The re-pitch is **shorter and clearer**, not shorter and blunter.
-- It adds the premise you were missing rather than just deleting words.
+- It adds the premise you were missing, instead of only deleting words.
-- Project nouns replace invented ones — the terms in your `CONTEXT.md` come back.
+- Project nouns replace invented ones. The terms in your `CONTEXT.md` come back.
-- You can fire it twice in a row without it degrading into terseness.
+- You can use it twice in a row, and it does not degrade into terseness.
 
 ## Where it fits
 
-`wait-what` is a reach-for-it-anytime standalone — it sits inside whatever conversation you're already having, in any skill, at any point. It's the extinguisher; [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs) is the sprinkler system, because a shared language agreed upfront is the real cure for jargon, and [domain-modeling](https://aihero.dev/skills-domain-modeling) is what you reach for when the *words themselves* are the problem rather than one bad message. When you're unsure which skill fits the moment, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.
+You can use `wait-what` at any point, in any conversation, inside any other skill. It repairs one message after the fact. The real cure is a shared language agreed upfront, and that is [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs): a grilling session that runs [domain-modeling](https://aihero.dev/skills-domain-modeling) as it goes, so the words you both use land in your `CONTEXT.md`. If you're unsure which skill fits the moment, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.

docs/productivity/writing-for-agents.md

@@ -1,32 +1,70 @@
-[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/writing-for-agents)
-
 ## What it does
 
-`writing-for-agents` is the reference you write agent-facing documents against — skills, `AGENTS.md` / `CLAUDE.md`, and any doc an agent reaches by a pointer. The packaging differs; the writing does not: the same levers make each one predictable, so the agent takes the same *process* every run rather than producing the same output.
+`writing-for-agents` is the reference you write agent-facing documents against — a skill, an `AGENTS.md` / `CLAUDE.md`, a spec, a runtime prompt, a README, any doc an agent reads. The packaging differs; the writing does not: the same levers make each one predictable, so the agent takes the same *process* every run rather than producing the same output.
 
-Formerly `writing-great-skills`. The rename tracks what the reference always was underneath: almost none of it is skill-specific. The universal core — context pointers, the two loads, the information hierarchy, completion criteria, leading words, pruning — applies to any document an agent consumes; the genuinely skill-only mechanics (frontmatter, the model- vs user-invoked choice, router skills) are disclosed to a linked `SKILL-MECHANICS.md` you read only when the document you're writing is a skill.
+Its default move is deletion, not explanation. Ask an agent to write instructions for another agent and it spends most of its words explaining what the model already knows — every one of those lines is a **no-op**, paying context and changing no behaviour. This reference is the lens that finds them, which is why it earns its keep at least as often on a document you already have as on a blank file.
+
+It was called `writing-great-skills` until v1.1. The rename tracks what it always was underneath: almost none of it is skill-specific. The skill-only mechanics — frontmatter, the model- versus user-invoked choice, router skills — are disclosed to a linked `SKILL-MECHANICS.md` you read only when the document in front of you is a skill.
 
 ## When to reach for it
 
-The agent reaches for it on its own whenever you're creating or editing a skill, or modifying `AGENTS.md` or `CLAUDE.md` — and you can still type `/writing-for-agents` to pull it up directly.
+Type `/writing-for-agents`, or the agent reaches for it on its own when you're creating or editing a skill, or modifying `AGENTS.md` or `CLAUDE.md`.
+
+Reach for it by hand for everything else an agent reads: your docs, specs and tickets, system and AFK prompts. The test is one question — does an agent read this? — and it does not matter how the document gets in front of it, whether a pointer names it, a human pastes it, or it simply sits in the repo. For working out what a codebase actually contains in the first place, use [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs) — this reference governs how a document reads, not what it knows.
 
 ## The two loads
 
-The concept the whole reference turns on is a pair of budgets every document and pointer spends:
+The idea the whole reference turns on is a pair of budgets every document and pointer spends:
 
 - **Context load** — the cost of always-loaded material on the agent's window: an `AGENTS.md` line, a skill description, anything sitting in context every turn whether or not it fires.
-- **Cognitive load** — the cost on the human: which documents exist and when to reach for each. You are the index. Not a cost to minimise — it's the price of human agency.
+- **Cognitive load** — the cost on you: which documents exist, and when to reach for each. You are the index. Not a cost to minimise — it is the price of human agency.
 
-Once you're thinking in these two loads, most authoring decisions — split or don't, inline or disclose, point or push — become the same trade made in different places.
+Once you think in these two loads, most authoring decisions — split or don't, inline or disclose, point or push — become the same trade made in different places.
 
-## The other levers
+## The levers
 
-- **Context pointers** — the reference held in context that names out-of-context material and encodes when to reach it. A skill description and an `AGENTS.md` line pointing at a doc are the same object; the pointer's *wording*, not its target, decides when and how reliably the agent reaches through it.
+- **Context pointers** — the reference held in context that names out-of-context material and encodes when to reach it. A skill description and an `AGENTS.md` line naming a doc are the same object; the pointer's *wording*, not its target, decides how reliably the agent reaches through it.
-- **Information hierarchy** — the ladder from in-file step, to in-file reference, to disclosed reference behind a pointer. **Progressive disclosure** is the move down that ladder so the top stays legible; **co-location** decides what sits beside each piece once placed.
+- **Information hierarchy** — the ladder from in-file step, to in-file reference, to disclosed reference behind a pointer. **Progressive disclosure** is the move down that ladder so the top stays legible.
-- **Completion criteria** — the clarity and demand of each step's done-condition, and the **legwork** it drives; the defence against **premature completion**.
+- **Completion criteria** — the clarity and demand of each step's done-condition, and the **legwork** that demand drives; the defence against **premature completion**.
-- **Leading words** — a compact concept already in the model's pretraining (*tight*, *red*, *tracer bullet*) that the agent thinks with while running the document; hunt restatements a single word can retire.
+- **Leading words** — a compact concept already in the model's pretraining (*tight*, *red*, *tracer bullet*) that the agent thinks with while running the document. It anchors twice: execution in the body, invocation in the pointer.
-- **Pruning** — single source of truth, relevance, and the no-op test applied sentence by sentence, against **sediment** and **sprawl**. Single source of truth reaches past the document into the environment: a doc restating what's already in `package.json`, a config file, or `--help` output is a **cache** of a lookup that was never expensive, and it's the copy that goes stale. Cache what the agent can't find by looking — the unwritten convention, the reason behind a choice.
+- **Pruning** — single source of truth, relevance, and the no-op test applied sentence by sentence, against **duplication**, **sediment** and **sprawl**.
+
+## Common questions
+
+**Where did `/writing-great-skills` go?**
+It is this skill, renamed in v1.1. Practitioners were already pointing it at `AGENTS.md`, docs, specs, tickets and runtime prompts long before the name caught up; structure, leading words and pruning turn out to be the craft of any text an agent reads. There is no alias — reinstall under the new name.
+
+**"Writing for agents" — so the agent does the writing?**
+The other way round. You are the author; the agent is the reader. That is the whole difficulty of the genre: you are writing for a reader who has already read everything, so explanation is waste and precision is the entire job.
+
+**Can't I just ask the agent to write it for me?**
+You can, and it will produce something verbose. Left alone the model explains what it already knows, and it will not apply the no-op test or reach for a leading word on its own. Use the reference on the draft — a review pass is where most of its value lands.
+
+**I asked an agent to trim a document and it cut the functionality.**
+Agents told to "streamline" optimise for length, because length is the thing they can see. The no-op test is behavioural, not aesthetic: delete the line and ask whether the agent's behaviour changed. When a sentence fails, delete the whole sentence rather than trim words from it — and settle a disagreement about it by running the document, not by arguing.
+
+**How do I know when it's done?**
+When it works, and you can no longer find duplication, sediment or no-ops. There is no automated eval here; the check is a manual run plus the failure-mode vocabulary as a diagnostic. When a document misbehaves, that vocabulary is also the repair kit — name the failure mode first, then fix that.
+
+**Should this live in `CLAUDE.md` or somewhere else?**
+Ask which load you want to pay. `CLAUDE.md` loads into every session unconditionally; material behind a pointer costs only the pointer's own line until it fires. Anything that applies in one context out of ten is paying context load the nine other times.
+
+**Do I need to rewrite my documents for each new model?**
+Mostly no, and over-fitting to one model is its own trap. Updating for a new model is usually another no-op pass rather than a rewrite.
+
+**My skill only works on the exact task I built it from.**
+The common route — do the work once, then have the agent write it up as a skill — over-indexes on that one run, and the exemplars come out too specific. Keep the run as evidence, then abstract deliberately: strip what belonged to that repo and those files, and write for the class of task.
+
+**English isn't my first language. Do I lose the leading-word advantage?**
+No — finding the word that packs the most behaviour into the fewest tokens is work the reference does for you. It is one of the things it is for.
+
+## It's working if
+
+- The document gets shorter as it gets better, and you are surprised how little is left.
+- You can point at a leading word and watch it doing work in more than one place.
+- Nothing is stated twice, in any form. Duplication is the most reliable sign a document was never tested.
+- Reference that only one branch needs sits behind a pointer rather than in the main file.
 
 ## Where it fits
 
-This is a reach-for-it-anytime standalone reference — the meta-skill you consult while building the rest of the set, not a step in a chain. When you're unsure which skill or flow fits a task, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you over the whole set.
+This is a reach-for-it-anytime standalone reference. It has no neighbour in the chain because it sits underneath the whole set rather than beside any one skill: every skill here was written against it, and the documents the other skills leave behind — a `CONTEXT.md` and its ADRs, a spec, a ticket — are exactly the text it governs once an agent has to read them. When you're unsure which skill or flow fits a task, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you over the whole set.

skills/engineering/ask-matt/SKILL.md

@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ Off the main flow entirely.
 - **`/research`** — delegate reading legwork to a **background agent**: it investigates a question against **primary sources**, then leaves a cited Markdown file in the repo. Keep working while it reads. The file it produces is something to take *into* the main flow at `/grill-with-docs` — research feeds the thinking, it doesn't replace it.
 - **`/to-questionnaire`** — when the thing blocking you isn't in your head or the codebase but in **someone else's**, this writes them a questionnaire to fill in. It's the inverse of `/grill-me`: instead of interviewing you about the subject, it interviews you about the **send** — who it's going to, what you need back — and aims the questions at the gap. What comes back is material for `/grill-with-docs` or `/to-spec`.
 - **`/wizard`** — for the steps only a **human** can take: clicking through a third-party dashboard, running a one-off migration, moving the project from state A to state B. It generates an interactive bash script that opens each URL, captures each value, and writes it into `.env` and GitHub secrets — so the procedure stops being something you re-explain to an agent every time. If the agent could just do it itself, it should; reach for this only where a human is genuinely in the loop.
-- **`/wait-what`** — the fire extinguisher for a message that didn't land. Fire it mid-conversation, inside any other skill, and the agent re-pitches what it just said with the context you were missing, in plain English, using the `CONTEXT.md` vocabulary. It's the in-the-moment corrective; `/grill-with-docs` and `/domain-modeling` are the upfront cure, because a shared language agreed early is what stops the jargon arriving at all.
+- **`/wait-what`** — the corrective for a message that didn't land. Use it mid-conversation, inside any other skill, and the agent re-pitches what it just said with the context you were missing, in plain English, using the `CONTEXT.md` vocabulary. It works after the fact; `/grill-with-docs` is the upfront cure, because a shared language agreed early is what stops the jargon arriving at all.
 - **`/teach`** — learn a concept over multiple sessions, using the current directory as a stateful workspace.
 - **`/writing-for-agents`** — reference for writing documents agents consume: skills, AGENTS.md, pointed-at docs.