mirror of
https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.git
synced 2026-07-29 02:52:42 +07:00
Compare commits
24
Commits
| Author | SHA1 | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
9c32629965 | ||
|
|
b8fd9afa42 | ||
|
|
9603c1cc81 | ||
|
|
fde4cd58cf | ||
|
|
c70cb09193 | ||
|
|
e9fcdf95b4 | ||
|
|
7f68c06dcb | ||
|
|
bbce2f91d6 | ||
|
|
66898f60e8 | ||
|
|
0ac3f3fbf1 | ||
|
|
697d4ce974 | ||
|
|
8f4952b6a3 | ||
|
|
d3275456a4 | ||
|
|
04fee67571 | ||
|
|
33dfc9b28f | ||
|
|
8eb8f58f0f | ||
|
|
3bb587fa5c | ||
|
|
170ad48655 | ||
|
|
2602257241 | ||
|
|
45afd8074a | ||
|
|
6704a52ac4 | ||
|
|
7d694b7ae9 | ||
|
|
f15b4dca01 | ||
|
|
e74fee89fe |
@@ -2,10 +2,12 @@
|
||||
|
||||
Every `SKILL.md` in this repo is a skill. The one axis that splits them is **invocation** — who can reach it:
|
||||
|
||||
- **User-invoked** — reachable **only by the human typing its name**. Set `disable-model-invocation: true` in the frontmatter. The `description` is **human-facing**: a one-line summary read by a person browsing slash-commands. Strip trigger lists ("Use when the user says…").
|
||||
- **Model-invoked** — reachable by **model or user**. The default: omit `disable-model-invocation`. The `description` is **model-facing** and keeps rich trigger phrasing ("Use when the user wants…, mentions…, asks for…") so auto-invocation fires. The test for whether a skill should stay model-invoked: _could the model usefully reach for this autonomously?_ (Reuse is the reason to extract a skill, not the test.)
|
||||
- **User-invoked** — reachable **only by the human typing its name**. Set `disable-model-invocation: true` in the frontmatter (Claude Code) and `policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false` in `agents/openai.yaml` (Codex). The `description` is **human-facing**: a one-line summary read by a person browsing slash-commands. Strip trigger lists ("Use when the user says…").
|
||||
- **Model-invoked** — reachable by **model or user**. The default: omit `disable-model-invocation` and the `policy` block from `agents/openai.yaml`. The `description` is **model-facing** and keeps rich trigger phrasing ("Use when the user wants…, mentions…, asks for…") so auto-invocation fires. The test for whether a skill should stay model-invoked: _could the model usefully reach for this autonomously?_ (Reuse is the reason to extract a skill, not the test.)
|
||||
|
||||
Because a user-invoked skill has no description, nothing but the human can reach it — no other skill can fire it. So a user-invoked skill may invoke model-invoked skills, but it can never reach another user-invoked skill.
|
||||
Each harness excludes a user-invoked skill from the model's reach in its own way, so nothing but the human can fire it — no other skill can. A user-invoked skill may invoke model-invoked skills, but it can never reach another user-invoked skill.
|
||||
|
||||
Every skill also carries an `agents/openai.yaml` beside its `SKILL.md`. It holds Codex UI metadata — `interface.display_name` and `interface.short_description` for the skill picker — and, for user-invoked skills, the `policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false` that pairs with `disable-model-invocation`. Keep the two in sync: a skill is user-invoked in both harnesses or neither.
|
||||
|
||||
Bucket `README.md`s and the top-level `README.md` group entries into **User-invoked** and **Model-invoked**.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": patch
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Make `/ask-matt` clued-up about `/wayfinder` — the heaviest, most cognitively demanding flow.
|
||||
|
||||
The router now sharpens the two routing mistakes people most often make with wayfinder:
|
||||
|
||||
- **Over-reaching for it.** It's slower and denser than a single grill, so it's flagged as the heaviest flow and reserved for the idea that genuinely won't fit one session — a well-scoped feature belongs on `/grill-with-docs`, not here.
|
||||
- **Losing the way at the handoff.** When the map clears, wayfinder hands off, it doesn't build: merge onto the main flow at `/to-spec` (which collapses the map's linked decisions into a buildable plan) rather than looping the map straight into `/implement`. Straight-to-`/implement` is only for efforts that turned out genuinely small.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": minor
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Add Codex metadata alongside each skill's Claude Code frontmatter so the set works in both harnesses without generated copies.
|
||||
|
||||
- Add an `agents/openai.yaml` beside every `SKILL.md` with Codex UI metadata (`interface.display_name`, `interface.short_description`).
|
||||
- Mark every user-invoked skill with `policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false`, the Codex analog of `disable-model-invocation: true`, so Codex excludes it from implicit invocation while explicit `$skill` invocation still works.
|
||||
- Document the dual-harness invocation model in `.agents/invocation.md`, `CLAUDE.md`, and the promoted-bucket READMEs.
|
||||
- Add `AGENTS.md` as a symlink to `CLAUDE.md` so Codex reads the same repo instructions.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": patch
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Reword **`grilling`** for general use. Its description and body no longer scope the interview to a software plan: "this plan" → "this", "enact the plan" → "act on it", and "exploring the codebase" → "exploring the environment". The technique is unchanged; it now reads as a stress-test of any plan, decision, or idea.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": patch
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Rework **`grilling`** from one-question-at-a-time to round-by-round. It now maps the decision tree and asks the whole **frontier** — every question whose prerequisites are already settled — in a single numbered round, then recomputes the frontier from the user's answers and asks the next round. Same 13 questions land in ~3 rounds instead of 13. Facts the environment can answer are dispatched to background sub-agents so research never blocks the round: only questions downstream of a running exploration wait for it. The session ends when the frontier is empty.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": minor
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Reshape the **`prototype`** skill's logic branch to produce a **single shareable HTML file** instead of a terminal app. The demo is one self-contained file (plain HTML/CSS/JS, no build, no server) a non-developer can open by double-click and drive in their own domain language: a labelled state panel, always-available free-play buttons, and a set of tabbed **guided walkthroughs** — each a scenario with the ordered buttons to press underneath it. The portable pure-logic module still lifts into the real code; the HTML shell is the throwaway primary source.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": patch
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Name the `/wayfinder` unit a **decision ticket**.
|
||||
|
||||
People kept reading a wayfinder ticket as an ordinary *implementation* ticket — a slice of a build to execute — when wayfinder uses them as **decision tickets**: questions whose resolution is a decision. The skill description and its opening line now introduce "decision ticket" (and say what makes it one), and the `ask-matt` / engineering README wayfinder blurbs and the docs page match — while "ticket" stays the everyday word once the term is established. `CONTEXT.md` records **Decision ticket** as a domain term so the "avoid: ticket" guidance no longer contradicts wayfinder's deliberate use of the word.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": minor
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Wayfinder now burns research tickets down with subagents instead of leaving them parked for a separately-launched session.
|
||||
|
||||
Research stays a real ticket type — it's a genuine shared blocker that downstream decisions hang on, and that dependency is exactly what the frontier's blocking edges exist to render. What changes is how it's resolved: because research is AFK, charting doesn't stop and read it. After creating the tickets, the charting session fires a `/research` subagent for each research ticket to burn it down in parallel, capturing the findings on a throwaway `research/<name>` branch with a context pointer. Research tickets are the one exception to *one ticket per session*.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
"mattpocock-skills": minor
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Add a YAGNI scoping filter to the **`improve-codebase-architecture`** skill's Explore step. Instead of scanning the whole repo evenly, it now scopes to where change is actually landing: if you name a direction it takes it, otherwise it reads the last ~20 commit messages to bias exploration toward actively-developed paths. A deepening opportunity in code nobody touches is a refactor you'll never cash in — the leverage only pays off where you keep editing — so the report stops tidying dormant corners of the repo.
|
||||
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@
|
||||
"./skills/engineering/domain-modeling",
|
||||
"./skills/engineering/codebase-design",
|
||||
"./skills/engineering/code-review",
|
||||
"./skills/engineering/resolving-merge-conflicts",
|
||||
"./skills/productivity/grill-me",
|
||||
"./skills/productivity/grilling",
|
||||
"./skills/productivity/handoff",
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ Each bucket folder has a `README.md` that lists every skill in the bucket with a
|
||||
|
||||
Skills in `engineering/` and `productivity/` also have a human-facing docs page at `docs/<bucket>/<skill-name>.md` (the docs tree mirrors those two bucket folders under `skills/`). The published URL is `https://aihero.dev/skills-<skill-name>` regardless of bucket — the docs path is repo organisation only. When you add, rename, or change the behaviour of a skill in `engineering/` or `productivity/`, create or re-sync its docs page following [.agents/writing-docs.md](./.agents/writing-docs.md). Skills in the non-promoted buckets (`misc/`, `personal/`, `in-progress/`, `deprecated/`) get **no** docs page.
|
||||
|
||||
Every `SKILL.md` is either user-invoked (`disable-model-invocation: true`, reachable only by the human) or model-invoked (model- or user-reachable). See [.agents/invocation.md](./.agents/invocation.md).
|
||||
Every `SKILL.md` is either user-invoked (`disable-model-invocation: true` plus `policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false` in `agents/openai.yaml`, reachable only by the human) or model-invoked (model- or user-reachable). See [.agents/invocation.md](./.agents/invocation.md).
|
||||
|
||||
[`ask-matt`](./skills/engineering/ask-matt/SKILL.md) is the router that maps every user-reachable skill and how they relate. The same trigger that re-syncs a docs page applies to it: whenever you add, rename, remove, or change how a user-reachable skill fits the flows, re-read `ask-matt`'s `SKILL.md` and update it so the map stays accurate — a new skill it never mentions, or a stale one it still routes to, is a router that lies.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
+5
-1
@@ -10,7 +10,10 @@ _Avoid_: backlog manager, backlog backend, issue host
|
||||
|
||||
**Issue**:
|
||||
A single tracked unit of work inside an **Issue tracker** — a bug, task, spec, or slice produced by `to-tickets`.
|
||||
_Avoid_: ticket (use only when quoting external systems that call them tickets)
|
||||
_Avoid_: ticket (use only when quoting external systems that call them tickets, or for a **Decision ticket** — see below)
|
||||
|
||||
**Decision ticket**:
|
||||
A `wayfinder` unit — a child **Issue** of a `wayfinder:map` holding a *question* whose resolution is a decision, not a slice of a build to execute. The **decision** qualifier is what keeps it distinct from an implementation ticket; `wayfinder` introduces the term, then uses "ticket".
|
||||
|
||||
**Triage role**:
|
||||
A canonical state-machine label applied to an **Issue** during triage (e.g. `needs-triage`, `ready-for-afk`). Each role maps to a real label string in the **Issue tracker** via `docs/agents/triage-labels.md`.
|
||||
@@ -19,6 +22,7 @@ A canonical state-machine label applied to an **Issue** during triage (e.g. `nee
|
||||
|
||||
- An **Issue tracker** holds many **Issues**
|
||||
- An **Issue** carries one **Triage role** at a time
|
||||
- A **Decision ticket** is an **Issue** (a child of a `wayfinder:map`)
|
||||
|
||||
## Flagged ambiguities
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -195,6 +195,7 @@ Skills I use daily for code work.
|
||||
- **[domain-modeling](./skills/engineering/domain-modeling/SKILL.md)** — Actively build and sharpen a project's domain model — challenge terms against the glossary, stress-test with edge-case scenarios, and update `CONTEXT.md` and ADRs inline.
|
||||
- **[codebase-design](./skills/engineering/codebase-design/SKILL.md)** — Shared discipline and vocabulary for designing deep modules: a lot of behaviour behind a small interface, placed at a clean seam, testable through that interface.
|
||||
- **[code-review](./skills/engineering/code-review/SKILL.md)** — Two-axis review of the diff since a fixed point: **Standards** (does it follow the repo's coding standards, plus a Fowler smell baseline?) and **Spec** (does it faithfully implement the originating issue/PRD?), run as parallel sub-agents so neither pollutes the other.
|
||||
- **[resolving-merge-conflicts](./skills/engineering/resolving-merge-conflicts/SKILL.md)** — Work through an in-progress git merge or rebase conflict hunk by hunk, resolving by intent traced to each side's primary source, then finish the operation — never `--abort`.
|
||||
|
||||
### Productivity
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -209,4 +210,4 @@ General workflow tools, not code-specific.
|
||||
|
||||
**Model-invoked**
|
||||
|
||||
- **[grilling](./skills/productivity/grilling/SKILL.md)** — Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until every branch of the decision tree is resolved. The reusable loop behind `grill-me` and `grill-with-docs`.
|
||||
- **[grilling](./skills/productivity/grilling/SKILL.md)** — Interview the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea until every branch of the decision tree is resolved. The reusable loop behind `grill-me` and `grill-with-docs`.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ This skill is stateful — it writes into your repo as it grills. Resolved terms
|
||||
|
||||
## The grill
|
||||
|
||||
The engine is a **grill**: a relentless, one-question-at-a-time walk down the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions before moving on, with a recommended answer offered for every question. Questions the codebase can answer are answered by reading the codebase, not by asking you.
|
||||
The engine is a **grill**: a relentless, one-question-at-a-time walk down the decision tree, resolving dependencies between decisions before moving on, with a recommended answer offered for every question. Questions the codebase can answer are answered by reading the codebase, not by asking you.
|
||||
|
||||
What makes this variant its own skill is where the answers go. As the grill runs, fuzzy language gets sharpened into canonical terms and written to the glossary inline — not batched at the end. The glossary stays a glossary: pure vocabulary, no implementation details, no spec. ADRs are offered sparingly, only when a decision is hard to reverse, surprising without context, and the result of a real trade-off. Most sessions produce a sharper glossary and few or no ADRs, and that's the intended shape.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -16,6 +16,8 @@ npx skills update improve-codebase-architecture
|
||||
|
||||
It does **not** hand you a flat list of refactors. Every candidate has to pass the **deletion test** — would removing this module *concentrate* complexity behind a smaller interface, or just move it around? Only the "concentrates" cases earn a card. That filter is what stops the report from becoming generic cleanup advice.
|
||||
|
||||
Unless you point it at a specific area, it also scopes itself to where development is actually landing — reading the recent commits to bias toward the code you're still changing. Deepening a module pays off by making future changes to it easier, so it puts extra weight on the parts of the repo that have recently changed.
|
||||
|
||||
## When to reach for it
|
||||
|
||||
You invoke this by typing `/improve-codebase-architecture` — the agent won't reach for it on its own.
|
||||
@@ -36,4 +38,4 @@ Then it stops and asks which one you want to explore. Pick one and it runs the [
|
||||
|
||||
## Where it fits
|
||||
|
||||
`improve-codebase-architecture` is **periodic maintenance** — run it every few days, not as a step in a chain. Its neighbours are [codebase-design](https://aihero.dev/skills-codebase-design), which owns the depth-and-seam vocabulary every candidate is written in, [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling), which walks the design tree once you've chosen a candidate, and [domain-modeling](https://aihero.dev/skills-domain-modeling), which keeps `CONTEXT.md` and the ADRs current as the redesign settles. When you're unsure which skill or flow fits, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.
|
||||
`improve-codebase-architecture` is **periodic maintenance** — run it every few days, not as a step in a chain. Its neighbours are [codebase-design](https://aihero.dev/skills-codebase-design), which owns the depth-and-seam vocabulary every candidate is written in, [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling), which walks the decision tree once you've chosen a candidate, and [domain-modeling](https://aihero.dev/skills-domain-modeling), which keeps `CONTEXT.md` and the ADRs current as the redesign settles. When you're unsure which skill or flow fits, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -26,10 +26,10 @@ Reach for it when you have a design question that's hard to settle on paper —
|
||||
|
||||
The question decides the shape, and there are two shapes:
|
||||
|
||||
- **"Does this logic / state model feel right?"** — a tiny interactive terminal app that pushes the state machine through the awkward cases, printing the full state after every action so you can watch what changes.
|
||||
- **"Does this logic / state model feel right?"** — a single shareable HTML file, free-play buttons plus tabbed guided walkthroughs, that pushes the state machine through the awkward cases and shows the full state after every click, so anyone — including a non-developer — can watch what changes.
|
||||
- **"What should this look like?"** — several radically different UI variations on one route, switchable from a floating bar, so you compare real renders instead of imagining them.
|
||||
|
||||
Picking the wrong branch wastes the whole prototype, so the question comes first. Both branches keep state in memory, run from one command, and surface the full state on every step.
|
||||
Picking the wrong branch wastes the whole prototype, so the question comes first. Both branches keep state in memory, are trivial to run, and surface the full state on every step.
|
||||
|
||||
## Keep the prototype as a primary source
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ npx skills update 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 investigation 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, and the map is done when nothing is left to decide before someone goes and builds the thing — so it produces decisions, not deliverables.
|
||||
`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.
|
||||
|
||||
## When to reach for it
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -30,13 +30,13 @@ The **map** is a single `wayfinder:map` issue whose tickets are its child issues
|
||||
|
||||
Beyond the live tickets lies the **fog of war** — decisions you can tell are coming but can't yet pin down. The test for whether something is a ticket or still fog is whether you can *state the question precisely now*, not whether you can answer it. Resolving a ticket clears the fog ahead of it, **graduating** whatever's now specifiable into fresh tickets. The **frontier** is the open, unblocked, unclaimed tickets — the edge of the known — and it's what the tracker's native blocking renders visually, so you see what's takeable without opening the map. Fog only gathers *toward* the **destination**; work past it is ruled **out of scope**, closed, never graduating.
|
||||
|
||||
Every ticket is **HITL** (human in the loop — grilling, prototype) or **AFK** (agent alone — research); a HITL ticket only resolves through a live exchange, so the agent never answers its own questions.
|
||||
Every ticket is **HITL** (human in the loop — grilling, prototype) or **AFK** (agent alone — research); a HITL ticket only resolves through a live exchange, so the agent never answers its own questions. Research stays a real ticket — a shared blocker downstream decisions hang on — but because it's AFK, a session doesn't stop and read: it fires a `/research` **subagent** to burn the ticket down in parallel, keeping the frontier fast, and captures the findings on a throwaway `research/<name>` branch.
|
||||
|
||||
## It's working if
|
||||
|
||||
- Naming the **destination** is the first act — before any ticket exists — because it fixes the scope every ticket is measured against.
|
||||
- One map is one `wayfinder:map` issue; tickets are its child issues, referred to by **name**, never a bare `#42`.
|
||||
- A session resolves **at most one ticket**, records the answer as a resolution comment, closes the ticket, and appends a one-line pointer to *Decisions so far*.
|
||||
- A session resolves **at most one ticket** (research tickets excepted), records the answer as a resolution comment, closes the ticket, and appends a one-line pointer to *Decisions so far*.
|
||||
- If the opening grill surfaces **no fog**, it stops and tells you the journey is small enough to skip the map.
|
||||
|
||||
## Where it fits
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ You invoke this by typing `/grill-me` — the agent won't reach for it on its ow
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
## The design tree
|
||||
## The decision tree
|
||||
|
||||
The session walks the plan as a tree of decisions, resolving dependencies between them one by one — a parent decision settled before the choices that hang off it. 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.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -12,9 +12,17 @@ npx skills update grilling
|
||||
|
||||
## What it does
|
||||
|
||||
`grilling` is the relentless interview that stress-tests a plan or design before you build it. It walks down the design tree branch by branch, resolving the dependencies between decisions one at a time until you and the agent share the same understanding.
|
||||
`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.
|
||||
|
||||
It asks **one question at a time** and waits for your answer before the next — never a bulk list, which is bewildering. Each question comes with the agent's own recommended answer, and any question the codebase can settle it explores instead of asking you. It won't start enacting the plan until you confirm the shared understanding has been reached.
|
||||
Each round asks the whole **frontier**: every decision whose prerequisites are already settled — the questions it can put to you *now* without guessing at answers it hasn't heard yet. Your answers reshape the tree, pushing the frontier outward, and the next round asks whatever that unblocks. Thirteen questions land in a handful of rounds instead of thirteen. Every question comes with the agent's own recommended answer; any *fact* the environment can settle it dispatches to a background sub-agent rather than asking you — and it doesn't block on that research, only the questions downstream of it wait. It won't act on the plan until you confirm the shared understanding has been reached.
|
||||
|
||||
### Prefer one question at a time?
|
||||
|
||||
If the old one-at-a-time rhythm suited you better, keep it. Add a line to your global `CLAUDE.md`:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
When grilling, ask one question at a time.
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
## When to reach for it
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -22,9 +30,9 @@ Type `/grilling`, or the agent reaches for it automatically when a task fits —
|
||||
|
||||
Reach for it when a plan or design still has soft spots and you want them surfaced before code is written. In practice you usually invoke it through one of its two wrappers rather than by name: for a plain grilling session use [grill-me](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-me); to have the session also write ADRs and a glossary as it goes, use [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs).
|
||||
|
||||
## The design tree
|
||||
## The decision tree
|
||||
|
||||
The mental model is a **design tree**: every plan branches into decisions, and decisions depend on each other. `grilling` descends that tree one node at a time, so an early answer can reshape which questions come next. That is why the questions arrive singly and in dependency order — a firehose of parallel questions loses the structure that makes the interview converge on a shared understanding.
|
||||
The mental model is a **design tree**: every plan branches into decisions, and decisions depend on each other. The **frontier** is the set of decisions whose prerequisites are all settled — the only questions that can be asked without guessing. `grilling` asks the whole frontier at once, then recomputes it from your answers, so a round is exactly the batch of questions that *don't* depend on each other. A question whose answer hinges on another still open this round waits for a later round. Asking in frontier-sized rounds keeps the dependency structure intact while sparing you a question-at-a-time drip.
|
||||
|
||||
## Pulled out on purpose
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ set -euo pipefail
|
||||
# Links all skills in the repository into the local skill directories used by
|
||||
# each agent harness:
|
||||
# - ~/.claude/skills — Claude Code
|
||||
# - ~/.agents/skills — pi and other Agent-Skills-standard harnesses
|
||||
# - ~/.agents/skills — Codex and other Agent Skills-compatible harnesses
|
||||
# Each entry is a symlink into this repo, so a `git pull` is all that's needed
|
||||
# to keep installed skills up to date.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Design an Interface"
|
||||
short_description: "Explore alternative module interfaces"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "QA"
|
||||
short_description: "Conversational QA that files issues"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Request Refactor Plan"
|
||||
short_description: "Plan a safe incremental refactor"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Ubiquitous Language"
|
||||
short_description: "Build a shared domain glossary"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Skills I use daily for code work.
|
||||
|
||||
## User-invoked
|
||||
|
||||
Reachable only when you type them (`disable-model-invocation: true`).
|
||||
Reachable only when you type them (Claude Code: `disable-model-invocation: true`; Codex: `policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false` in `agents/openai.yaml`).
|
||||
|
||||
- **[ask-matt](./ask-matt/SKILL.md)** — Ask which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the user-invoked skills in this repo.
|
||||
- **[grill-with-docs](./grill-with-docs/SKILL.md)** — Grilling session that also builds your project's domain model, sharpening terminology and updating `CONTEXT.md` and ADRs inline.
|
||||
@@ -13,7 +13,8 @@ Reachable only when you type them (`disable-model-invocation: true`).
|
||||
- **[setup-matt-pocock-skills](./setup-matt-pocock-skills/SKILL.md)** — Configure this repo for the engineering skills (issue tracker, triage labels, domain doc layout). Run once per repo.
|
||||
- **[to-spec](./to-spec/SKILL.md)** — Turn the current conversation into a spec and publish it to the issue tracker.
|
||||
- **[to-tickets](./to-tickets/SKILL.md)** — Break any plan, spec, or conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges — text in a local file, or native blocking links on a real tracker.
|
||||
- **[wayfinder](./wayfinder/SKILL.md)** — Plan a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of investigation tickets on the issue tracker, resolved one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.
|
||||
- **[implement](./implement/SKILL.md)** — Build the work described by a spec or set of tickets, driving `/tdd` at pre-agreed seams and closing out with `/code-review` before committing.
|
||||
- **[wayfinder](./wayfinder/SKILL.md)** — Plan a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of decision tickets on the issue tracker, resolved one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.
|
||||
|
||||
## Model-invoked
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -27,3 +28,4 @@ Model- or user-reachable (rich trigger phrasing so the model can reach for them)
|
||||
- **[domain-modeling](./domain-modeling/SKILL.md)** — Actively build and sharpen a project's domain model — challenge terms, stress-test with scenarios, update `CONTEXT.md` and ADRs inline.
|
||||
- **[codebase-design](./codebase-design/SKILL.md)** — Shared discipline and vocabulary for designing deep modules: small interfaces, clean seams, testable through the interface.
|
||||
- **[code-review](./code-review/SKILL.md)** — Two-axis review of the diff since a fixed point: **Standards** (does it follow the repo's coding standards, plus a Fowler smell baseline?) and **Spec** (does it faithfully implement the originating issue/PRD?), run as parallel sub-agents.
|
||||
- **[resolving-merge-conflicts](./resolving-merge-conflicts/SKILL.md)** — Work through an in-progress git merge or rebase conflict hunk by hunk, resolving by intent traced to each side's primary source, then finish the operation — never `--abort`.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -41,7 +41,9 @@ A starting situation that generates work, then merges onto the main flow.
|
||||
|
||||
- **Something's broken** → **`/diagnosing-bugs`**. For the hard ones: the bug that resists a first glance, the intermittent flake, the regression that crept in between two known-good states. It refuses to theorise until it has a **tight feedback loop** — one command that already goes red on *this* bug — then fixes with a regression test. Its post-mortem hands off to **`/improve-codebase-architecture`** when the real finding is that there's no good seam to lock the bug down.
|
||||
|
||||
- **A huge, foggy effort — a greenfield project or a huge feature build, too big for one session** → **`/wayfinder`**. When the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet, it charts a **shared map** of investigation tickets on the issue tracker and resolves them one at a time — producing **decisions, not deliverables** — until the fog is pushed back and the way is clear. Then it merges onto the main flow at **`/to-spec`** (or, if the effort turned out small enough, straight to **`/implement`**). Where **`/grill-with-docs`** sharpens an idea you can hold in one session, wayfinder is for the idea you can't.
|
||||
- **A huge, foggy effort — a greenfield project or a huge feature build, too big for one session** → **`/wayfinder`**, the most cognitively demanding flow here. When the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet, it charts a **shared map** of **decision tickets** on the issue tracker and resolves them one at a time — producing **decisions, not deliverables** — until the fog is pushed back and the way is clear. Where **`/grill-with-docs`** sharpens an idea you can hold in one session, wayfinder is for the idea you can't — and it's slower and denser, so save it for exactly that, never a well-scoped feature.
|
||||
|
||||
When the map clears, **it hands off, it doesn't build**: merge onto the main flow at **`/to-spec`**, which collapses the map's linked decisions into a buildable plan, then `/to-tickets` and `/implement` as usual. Looping the map straight into `/implement` skips that collapse and throws the linked detail away — go straight to `/implement` only when the effort turned out genuinely small.
|
||||
|
||||
## Codebase health
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Ask Matt"
|
||||
short_description: "Find the right skill or workflow"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Code Review"
|
||||
short_description: "Review a diff on standards and spec"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Codebase Design"
|
||||
short_description: "Vocabulary for deep-module design"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Diagnosing Bugs"
|
||||
short_description: "Diagnose hard bugs and regressions"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Domain Modeling"
|
||||
short_description: "Build and sharpen a domain model"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Grill with Docs"
|
||||
short_description: "Grill a design and write its docs"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Implement"
|
||||
short_description: "Build work from a spec or tickets"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -17,6 +17,11 @@ This command is _informed_ by the project's domain model and built on a shared d
|
||||
|
||||
### 1. Explore
|
||||
|
||||
**Scope before you scan — YAGNI.** Deepening a module pays off by making future changes to it easier, so put extra weight on the parts of the codebase that have recently changed. Decide *where* to look before you look:
|
||||
|
||||
- If the user named a direction — a module, a subsystem, a pain point — take it, and skip the inference below.
|
||||
- Otherwise, walk back a good stretch of the commit history (`git log --oneline`) to find the codebase's hot spots — the files and areas that keep coming up — and let those paths pull your attention first. If the changes are scattered with no clear hot spot, widen the net.
|
||||
|
||||
Read the project's domain glossary (`CONTEXT.md`) and any ADRs in the area you're touching first.
|
||||
|
||||
Then use the Agent tool with `subagent_type=Explore` to walk the codebase. Don't follow rigid heuristics — explore organically and note where you experience friction:
|
||||
@@ -56,7 +61,7 @@ Do NOT propose interfaces yet. After the file is written, ask the user: "Which o
|
||||
|
||||
### 3. Grilling loop
|
||||
|
||||
Once the user picks a candidate, run the `/grilling` skill to walk the design tree with them — constraints, dependencies, the shape of the deepened module, what sits behind the seam, what tests survive.
|
||||
Once the user picks a candidate, run the `/grilling` skill to walk the decision tree with them — constraints, dependencies, the shape of the deepened module, what sits behind the seam, what tests survive.
|
||||
|
||||
Side effects happen inline as decisions crystallize — run the `/domain-modeling` skill to keep the domain model current as you go:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Improve Codebase Architecture"
|
||||
short_description: "Find and grill architecture improvements"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -1,13 +1,15 @@
|
||||
# Logic Prototype
|
||||
|
||||
A tiny interactive terminal app that lets the user drive a state model by hand. Use this when the question is about **business logic, state transitions, or data shape** — the kind of thing that looks reasonable on paper but only feels wrong once you push it through real cases.
|
||||
A single, self-contained HTML file — a **shareable demo** — that lets anyone drive a state model by clicking buttons. Use this when the question is about **business logic, state transitions, or data shape** — the kind of thing that looks reasonable on paper but only feels wrong once you push it through real cases.
|
||||
|
||||
Because it's one file with nothing to install, you can hand it to a non-developer — a designer, a PM, a domain expert — and let them feel the model for themselves. So it speaks their language, not the code's.
|
||||
|
||||
## When this is the right shape
|
||||
|
||||
- "I'm not sure if this state machine handles the edge case where X then Y."
|
||||
- "Does this data model actually let me represent the case where..."
|
||||
- "I want to feel out what the API should look like before writing it."
|
||||
- Anything where the user wants to **press buttons and watch state change**.
|
||||
- Anything where someone wants to **press buttons and watch state change**.
|
||||
|
||||
If the question is "what should this look like" — wrong branch. Use [UI.md](UI.md).
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -15,17 +17,11 @@ If the question is "what should this look like" — wrong branch. Use [UI.md](UI
|
||||
|
||||
### 1. State the question
|
||||
|
||||
Before writing code, write down what state model and what question you're prototyping. One paragraph, in the prototype's README or a comment at the top of the file. A logic prototype that answers the wrong question is pure waste — make the question explicit so it can be checked later, whether the user is watching now or returning to it AFK.
|
||||
Before writing code, write down what state model and what question you're prototyping. One paragraph, at the top of the demo (in a visible intro, not just a comment). A logic prototype that answers the wrong question is pure waste — make the question explicit so it can be checked later, whether the user is watching now or returning to it AFK.
|
||||
|
||||
### 2. Pick the language
|
||||
### 2. Isolate the logic in a portable module
|
||||
|
||||
Use whatever the host project uses. If the project has no obvious runtime (e.g. a docs repo), ask.
|
||||
|
||||
Match the project's existing conventions for tooling — don't add a new package manager or runtime just for the prototype.
|
||||
|
||||
### 3. Isolate the logic in a portable module
|
||||
|
||||
Put the actual logic — the bit that's answering the question — behind a small, pure interface that could be lifted out and dropped into the real codebase later. The TUI around it is throwaway; the logic module shouldn't be.
|
||||
Put the actual logic — the bit that's answering the question — in a single `<script>` block written as a small, pure module that could be lifted out and dropped into the real codebase later. The page around it is throwaway; this module isn't.
|
||||
|
||||
The right shape depends on the question:
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -34,46 +30,38 @@ The right shape depends on the question:
|
||||
- **A small set of pure functions** over a plain data type. Good when there's no implicit current state — just transformations.
|
||||
- **A class or module with a clear method surface** when the logic genuinely owns ongoing internal state.
|
||||
|
||||
Pick whichever shape best fits the question being asked, *not* whichever is easiest to wire to a TUI. Keep it pure: no I/O, no terminal code, no `console.log` for control flow. The TUI imports it and calls into it; nothing flows the other direction.
|
||||
Pick whichever shape best fits the question being asked, *not* whichever is easiest to wire to a page. Keep it pure: no DOM, no `document`, no button handlers reaching inside it. The page calls into it; nothing flows the other direction. This is what makes the prototype useful past its own lifetime: once the question's answered, the validated reducer / machine / function set lifts into the real module on its own.
|
||||
|
||||
This is what makes the prototype useful past its own lifetime: when the question's been answered, the validated reducer / machine / function set can be lifted into the real module on its own.
|
||||
### 3. Build the shareable HTML file
|
||||
|
||||
### 4. Build the smallest TUI that exposes the state
|
||||
One file, plain HTML/CSS/JS — no framework, no bundler, no server, everything inline so it opens by double-click and survives being emailed around. Anyone should be able to run it by opening it.
|
||||
|
||||
Build it as a **lightweight TUI** — on every tick, clear the screen (`console.clear()` / `print("\033[2J\033[H")` / equivalent) and re-render the whole frame. The user should always see one stable view, not an ever-growing scrollback.
|
||||
Write it for a non-developer. Every label is in **domain language**, not code — buttons and state read like the business, not the reducer. Explain in plain words what's happening.
|
||||
|
||||
Each frame has two parts, in this order:
|
||||
Lay it out with a clean hierarchy, top to bottom:
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Current state**, pretty-printed and diff-friendly (one field per line, or formatted JSON). Use **bold** for field names or section headers and **dim** for less important context (timestamps, IDs, derived values). Native ANSI escape codes are fine — `\x1b[1m` bold, `\x1b[2m` dim, `\x1b[0m` reset. No need to pull in a styling library unless one is already in the project.
|
||||
2. **Keyboard shortcuts**, listed at the bottom: `[a] add user [d] delete user [t] tick clock [q] quit`. Bold the key, dim the description, or vice-versa — whatever reads cleanly.
|
||||
1. **Title and one-line explanation** of what this demo lets you explore (the question from step 1).
|
||||
2. **Current state** — the full relevant state, rendered as a readable panel (labelled fields, not a raw JSON dump), re-rendered after every click so the change is visible. Where it helps a non-developer follow, call out what just changed.
|
||||
3. **Free-play buttons** — one button per action, always available, so anyone can poke at the model in any order. Each click dispatches its action and re-renders the state.
|
||||
4. **Guided walkthroughs** — a set of **scenarios**, one per tab. Each tab holds a short plain-language description of the scenario — the situation it sets up and what to watch for — and underneath it, the ordered **buttons to press** for that scenario. Each step is a real button: clicking it performs that action and moves to the next step. Starting a walkthrough resets to a known initial state so the scenario runs the same way every time.
|
||||
|
||||
Behaviour:
|
||||
Choose scenarios that demonstrate the awkward cases — the happy path, a tricky edge case, an attempt at something that should be illegal — the ones hard to reason about on paper.
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Initialise state** — a single in-memory object/struct. Render the first frame on start.
|
||||
2. **Read one keystroke (or one line)** at a time, dispatch to a handler that mutates state.
|
||||
3. **Re-render** the full frame after every action — don't append, replace.
|
||||
4. **Loop until quit.**
|
||||
Keep it beautiful but restrained: clean typography, generous spacing, one accent colour. No animations, no gimmicks — nothing that competes with the state and the buttons.
|
||||
|
||||
The whole frame should fit on one screen.
|
||||
### 4. Hand it over
|
||||
|
||||
### 5. Make it runnable in one command
|
||||
Send them the file, or open it for them. They'll click through the walkthroughs and free-play whenever they get to it; the interesting moments are when they say "wait, that shouldn't be possible" or "huh, I assumed X would be different" — those are the bugs in the _idea_, which is the whole point. If they want new actions or a new scenario, add them. Prototypes evolve.
|
||||
|
||||
Add a script to the project's existing task runner (`package.json` scripts, `Makefile`, `justfile`, `pyproject.toml`). The user should run `pnpm run <prototype-name>` or equivalent — never need to remember a path.
|
||||
### 5. Capture the answer and the prototype
|
||||
|
||||
If the host project has no task runner, just put the command at the top of the prototype's README.
|
||||
|
||||
### 6. Hand it over
|
||||
|
||||
Give the user the run command. They'll drive it themselves; the interesting moments are when they say "wait, that shouldn't be possible" or "huh, I assumed X would be different" — those are the bugs in the _idea_, which is the whole point. If they want new actions added, add them. Prototypes evolve.
|
||||
|
||||
### 7. Capture the answer and the prototype
|
||||
|
||||
Once the prototype has answered its question, capture the answer, then capture the prototype the way the [SKILL](SKILL.md) describes. The logic-specific mapping: the validated reducer / machine / function set lifts into the real module (the decision, absorbed); the TUI shell rides along to the throwaway branch that keeps the prototype as a primary source.
|
||||
Once the prototype has answered its question, capture the answer, then capture the prototype the way the [SKILL](SKILL.md) describes. The logic-specific mapping: the validated reducer / machine / function set lifts into the real module (the decision, absorbed); the HTML shell rides along to the throwaway branch that keeps the prototype as a primary source — and being one self-contained file, it stays trivially re-runnable there.
|
||||
|
||||
## Anti-patterns
|
||||
|
||||
- **Don't add tests.** A prototype that needs tests is no longer a prototype.
|
||||
- **Don't wire it to the real database.** Use an in-memory store unless the question is specifically about persistence.
|
||||
- **Don't wire it to the real database.** Use in-memory state unless the question is specifically about persistence.
|
||||
- **Don't generalise.** No "what if we wanted to support X later." The prototype answers one question.
|
||||
- **Don't blur the logic and the TUI together.** If the reducer / state machine references `console.log`, prompts, or terminal escape codes, it's no longer portable. Keep the TUI as a thin shell over a pure module.
|
||||
- **Don't ship the TUI shell into production.** The shell is optimised for being driven by hand from a terminal. The logic module behind it is the bit worth keeping.
|
||||
- **Don't blur the logic and the page together.** If the pure module references the DOM, `document`, or button handlers, it's no longer liftable. Keep the page as a thin shell over a pure module.
|
||||
- **Don't reach for a framework, bundler, or server.** One file the recipient double-clicks; a React app or a dev server defeats "shareable".
|
||||
- **Don't ship the HTML shell into production.** The page is optimised for being clicked through by hand. The logic module behind it is the bit worth keeping.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ A prototype is **throwaway code that answers a question**. The question decides
|
||||
|
||||
Identify which question is being answered — from the user's prompt, the surrounding code, or by asking if the user is around:
|
||||
|
||||
- **"Does this logic / state model feel right?"** → [LOGIC.md](LOGIC.md). Build a tiny interactive terminal app that pushes the state machine through cases that are hard to reason about on paper.
|
||||
- **"Does this logic / state model feel right?"** → [LOGIC.md](LOGIC.md). Build a single shareable HTML file — free-play buttons plus tabbed guided walkthroughs — that pushes the state machine through cases that are hard to reason about on paper, and that a non-developer can drive.
|
||||
- **"What should this look like?"** → [UI.md](UI.md). Generate several radically different UI variations on a single route, switchable via a URL search param and a floating bottom bar.
|
||||
|
||||
The two branches produce very different artifacts — getting this wrong wastes the whole prototype. If the question is genuinely ambiguous and the user isn't reachable, default to whichever branch better matches the surrounding code (a backend module → logic; a page or component → UI) and state the assumption at the top of the prototype.
|
||||
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ The two branches produce very different artifacts — getting this wrong wastes
|
||||
## Rules that apply to both
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Throwaway from day one, and clearly marked as such.** Locate the prototype code close to where it will actually be used (next to the module or page it's prototyping for) so context is obvious — but name it so a casual reader can see it's a prototype, not production. For throwaway UI routes, obey whatever routing convention the project already uses; don't invent a new top-level structure.
|
||||
2. **One command to run.** Whatever the project's existing task runner supports — `pnpm <name>`, `python <path>`, `bun <path>`, etc. The user must be able to start it without thinking.
|
||||
2. **Trivial to run.** A UI prototype starts from one command in the project's task runner — `pnpm <name>`, `python <path>`, `bun <path>`, etc. A logic demo is a single HTML file the user double-clicks. Either way, no thinking required to start it.
|
||||
3. **No persistence by default.** State lives in memory. Persistence is the thing the prototype is _checking_, not something it should depend on. If the question explicitly involves a database, hit a scratch DB or a local file with a clear "PROTOTYPE — wipe me" name.
|
||||
4. **Skip the polish.** No tests, no error handling beyond what makes the prototype _runnable_, no abstractions. The point is to learn something fast.
|
||||
5. **Surface the state.** After every action (logic) or on every variant switch (UI), print or render the full relevant state so the user can see what changed.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Prototype"
|
||||
short_description: "Prototype to answer a design question"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Research"
|
||||
short_description: "Research from high-trust sources"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Resolving Merge Conflicts"
|
||||
short_description: "Resolve merge and rebase conflicts"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Setup Matt Pocock Skills"
|
||||
short_description: "Configure a repo for the skills"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "TDD"
|
||||
short_description: "Test-driven red-green-refactor"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "To Spec"
|
||||
short_description: "Turn a conversation into a spec"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "To Tickets"
|
||||
short_description: "Split a plan into tracer-bullet tickets"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Triage"
|
||||
short_description: "Move issues through triage roles"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
name: wayfinder
|
||||
description: Plan a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of investigation tickets on your issue tracker, and resolve them one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.
|
||||
description: Plan a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of decision tickets on your issue tracker, and resolve them one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.
|
||||
disable-model-invocation: true
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
A loose idea has arrived — too big for one agent session, and wrapped in fog: the way from here to the **destination** isn't visible yet. Wayfinding is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a **shared map** on the repo's issue tracker, then works its tickets one at a time until the route is clear.
|
||||
A loose idea has arrived — too big for one agent session, and wrapped in fog: the way from here to the **destination** isn't visible yet. Wayfinding is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a **shared map** on the repo's issue tracker, then works its **decision tickets** — questions whose resolution is a decision, not slices of a build to execute — one at a time until the route is clear.
|
||||
|
||||
The destination varies per effort, and naming it is the first act of charting — it shapes every ticket. It might be a spec to hand off and iterate on, a decision to lock before planning starts, or a change made in place like a data-structure migration. The map is domain-agnostic — engineering work, course content, whatever fits the shape.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ The answer isn't part of the body — it's recorded on resolution (see [Work thr
|
||||
|
||||
Every ticket is either **HITL** — human in the loop, worked *with* a human who speaks for themselves — or **AFK**, driven by the agent alone. A HITL ticket only resolves through that live exchange; the agent never stands in for the human's side of it (a grilling agent that answers its own questions has broken this).
|
||||
|
||||
- **Research** (AFK): Reading documentation, third-party APIs, or local resources like knowledge bases. Creates a markdown summary as a linked asset. Use when knowledge outside the current working directory is required.
|
||||
- **Research** (AFK): Reading documentation, third-party APIs, or local resources like knowledge bases to surface a fact a decision waits on. Resolved by a `/research` **subagent**. Use when knowledge outside the current working directory is required.
|
||||
- **Prototype** (HITL): Raise the fidelity of the discussion by making a cheap, rough, concrete artifact to react to — an outline, a rough take, a stub, or UI/logic code via the /prototype skill. Links the prototype as an asset. Use when "how should it look" or "how should it behave" is the key question.
|
||||
- **Grilling** (HITL): Conversation via the /grilling and /domain-modeling skills, one question at a time. The default case.
|
||||
- **Task** (HITL or AFK): Manual work that must happen before a *decision* can be made — nothing to decide, prototype, or research, but the discussion is blocked until it's done. Signing up for a service so its API can be judged, provisioning access, moving data so its shape can be seen. This is the one type that *does* rather than decides — and it earns its place by unblocking a decision, not by delivering the destination. The agent drives it alone where it can (AFK); otherwise it hands the human a precise checklist (HITL). Resolved when the work is done; the answer records what was done and any resulting facts (credentials location, new URLs, row counts) later tickets depend on.
|
||||
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ Ruling something out of scope is a scoping act, not a step on the route. When a
|
||||
|
||||
## Invocation
|
||||
|
||||
Two modes. Either way, **never resolve more than one ticket per session.**
|
||||
Two modes. Either way, **never resolve more than one ticket per session** — with the exception of research tickets.
|
||||
|
||||
### Chart the map
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -112,7 +112,8 @@ User invokes with a loose idea.
|
||||
2. **Map the frontier.** Grill again, **breadth-first** this time: fan out across the whole space rather than deep on any one thread, surfacing the open decisions and the first steps takeable now. **If this surfaces no fog** — the way to the destination is already clear, the whole journey small enough for one session — you don't need a map. Stop and ask the user how they'd like to proceed.
|
||||
3. **Create the map** (label `wayfinder:map`): Destination and Notes filled in, Decisions-so-far empty, the fog sketched into **Not yet specified**.
|
||||
4. **Create the tickets you can specify now** as child issues of the map — then wire blocking edges in a **second pass** (issues need ids before they can reference each other). Wiring sorts them into the frontier and the blocked; everything you can't yet specify stays in the fog — the **Not yet specified** section.
|
||||
5. Stop — charting the map is one session's work; do not also resolve tickets.
|
||||
5. **Fire the research subagents.** For each `research` ticket you just created, spin up a `/research` subagent to resolve it in parallel, capturing its findings on a throwaway `research/<name>` branch with a context pointer from the ticket.
|
||||
6. Stop — charting is one session's work; it hand-resolves nothing.
|
||||
|
||||
### Work through the map
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Wayfinder"
|
||||
short_description: "Map a large effort as decision tickets"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -9,3 +9,4 @@ Skills that are still being developed. They're not ready to ship — expect roug
|
||||
- **[writing-shape](./writing-shape/SKILL.md)** — Take a markdown file of raw material and shape it into an article paragraph by paragraph, arguing format choices at each step.
|
||||
- **[claude-handoff](./claude-handoff/SKILL.md)** — Hand the current conversation off to a fresh background agent that picks up the work immediately, seeded with a handoff summary via `claude --bg`. User-invoked.
|
||||
- **[setup-ts-deep-modules](./setup-ts-deep-modules/SKILL.md)** — Wire dependency-cruiser into a TypeScript repo so each package is a deep module — implementation hidden in subfolders, reachable only through its entry-point files, tests exercising it through those. User-invoked.
|
||||
- **[to-questionnaire](./to-questionnaire/SKILL.md)** — Turn a decision you can't fully answer into a Markdown questionnaire for someone else to fill in async, or over a meeting. It grills you about the send (who it's for, what you need back), not the subject. User-invoked.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Claude Handoff"
|
||||
short_description: "Hand off to a background agent"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Loop Me"
|
||||
short_description: "Spec the workflows you want to build"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Setup TS Deep Modules"
|
||||
short_description: "Enforce deep TypeScript modules"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
name: to-questionnaire
|
||||
description: Turn a decision you can't fully answer into a questionnaire for someone else to fill in.
|
||||
disable-model-invocation: true
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Turn something the user can't answer alone into a **questionnaire** — a Markdown document they hand to one person to fill in async, or fill out together over a meeting. The recipient holds knowledge the user lacks; the questionnaire pulls it out of them.
|
||||
|
||||
**Grill the send, not the subject.** Interview the user only about the _send_, which they can always answer: who it goes to, and what they need back. The questions in the document then target the **gap** between what the recipient knows and what the user needs.
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Who is it going to?** Ask, in one exchange, the recipient's role, expertise, and relationship to the user. This fixes the questionnaire's tone and how much context it must carry. Done when you know who the recipient is and what they know that the user doesn't.
|
||||
|
||||
2. **What do you need back?** Ask, in one exchange, the specific decisions or facts the user can't resolve alone and needs from this person. Done when you have a concrete list of what the user must walk away able to do or decide.
|
||||
|
||||
3. **Write the questionnaire.** Draft questions aimed at the gap from steps 1–2, following the Document structure below. Write it to `to-questionnaire-<slug>.md` in the current directory (slug from the topic) and report the path. Done when the file exists and every item the user named in step 2 is covered by a question.
|
||||
|
||||
## Document structure
|
||||
|
||||
Frame the document as a **discovery questionnaire**: the user lacks context, the recipient holds it. Order questions most-important-first — async means you may only get one pass — and group them under `##` headings by theme once there are more than a handful. Write it using the template below.
|
||||
|
||||
<questionnaire-template>
|
||||
|
||||
# <Questionnaire title>
|
||||
|
||||
**Purpose:** why this questionnaire exists and the decision riding on it.
|
||||
|
||||
**From:** <the user> — **To:** <the recipient> — **How your answers will be used:** <where they go>
|
||||
|
||||
## Context
|
||||
|
||||
One paragraph orienting a recipient who wasn't in the user's head. Enough to answer well, not a page.
|
||||
|
||||
## How to answer
|
||||
|
||||
Deadline and rough effort. Partial answers and "I don't know" are useful — flag anything you're unsure of rather than skipping it.
|
||||
|
||||
## <Theme heading>
|
||||
|
||||
One `##` section per theme. Under each, its questions, most-important-first. Every question is one idea — never compound — with an answer stub directly beneath, and a one-line _why this matters_ only where the question could be misread or invite a throwaway answer.
|
||||
|
||||
<question-example>
|
||||
### What load is the system expected to handle at launch?
|
||||
|
||||
_Why this matters: it decides whether we provision for burst traffic now or defer it._
|
||||
|
||||
>
|
||||
</question-example>
|
||||
|
||||
## Anything else?
|
||||
|
||||
A closing catch-all: anything we didn't ask that we should know?
|
||||
|
||||
</questionnaire-template>
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "To Questionnaire"
|
||||
short_description: "Front-load questions into a doc for someone to answer"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Wizard"
|
||||
short_description: "Generate an interactive setup wizard"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Writing Beats"
|
||||
short_description: "Assemble raw material into beats"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Writing Fragments"
|
||||
short_description: "Mine raw writing fragments"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Writing Shape"
|
||||
short_description: "Shape raw material into an article"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Git Guardrails for Claude Code"
|
||||
short_description: "Block dangerous git commands"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Migrate to Shoehorn"
|
||||
short_description: "Replace test assertions with shoehorn"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Scaffold Exercises"
|
||||
short_description: "Scaffold lint-ready course exercises"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Setup Pre-Commit"
|
||||
short_description: "Add pre-commit quality checks"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Edit Article"
|
||||
short_description: "Restructure and tighten a draft"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Obsidian Vault"
|
||||
short_description: "Manage linked notes in Obsidian"
|
||||
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ General workflow tools, not code-specific.
|
||||
|
||||
## User-invoked
|
||||
|
||||
Reachable only when you type them (`disable-model-invocation: true`).
|
||||
Reachable only when you type them (Claude Code: `disable-model-invocation: true`; Codex: `policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false` in `agents/openai.yaml`).
|
||||
|
||||
- **[grill-me](./grill-me/SKILL.md)** — Get relentlessly interviewed about a plan or design until every branch of the decision tree is resolved.
|
||||
- **[handoff](./handoff/SKILL.md)** — Compact the current conversation into a handoff document so another agent can continue the work.
|
||||
@@ -15,4 +15,4 @@ Reachable only when you type them (`disable-model-invocation: true`).
|
||||
|
||||
Model- or user-reachable (rich trigger phrasing so the model can reach for them).
|
||||
|
||||
- **[grilling](./grilling/SKILL.md)** — Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until every branch of the decision tree is resolved.
|
||||
- **[grilling](./grilling/SKILL.md)** — Interview the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea until every branch of the decision tree is resolved.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Grill Me"
|
||||
short_description: "Sharpen a plan through interview"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -1,12 +1,14 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
name: grilling
|
||||
description: Grill the user relentlessly about a plan or design. Use when the user wants to stress-test a plan before building, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
|
||||
description: Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Interview me relentlessly about every aspect of this plan until we reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one-by-one. For each question, provide your recommended answer.
|
||||
Interview the user relentlessly until you reach a shared understanding. Map this as a **design tree**: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.
|
||||
|
||||
Ask the questions one at a time, waiting for feedback on each question before continuing. Asking multiple questions at once is bewildering.
|
||||
Work the tree in **rounds**. The **frontier** is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled — the questions you can ask _now_ without guessing at answers you haven't heard yet. Ask the whole frontier in one round: number each question and give your recommended answer. Then wait for the user's answers before the next round.
|
||||
|
||||
If a *fact* can be found by exploring the codebase, look it up rather than asking me. The *decisions*, though, are mine — put each one to me and wait for my answer.
|
||||
Each round the user answers reshapes the tree — settled decisions push the frontier outward and unblock questions that depended on them. Recompute the frontier and ask the next round. A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a _later_ round, not this one.
|
||||
|
||||
Do not enact the plan until I confirm we have reached a shared understanding.
|
||||
Finding _facts_ is your job, never the user's. When a frontier question needs a fact from the environment (filesystem, tools, etc.), dispatch a sub-agent to find it — don't ask the user for anything you could look up yourself. Don't block on it: a running exploration is an unsettled prerequisite, so only the questions downstream of it wait for the sub-agent to report — ask the rest of the frontier now. The _decisions_ are the user's — put each to them and wait.
|
||||
|
||||
The session is done when the frontier is empty: every branch of the design tree visited, nothing left silently assumed. Do not act on it until the user confirms you have reached a shared understanding.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Grilling"
|
||||
short_description: "Stress-test thinking one question at a time"
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Handoff"
|
||||
short_description: "Compact a conversation into a handoff"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Teach"
|
||||
short_description: "Learn a concept in a guided workspace"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
||||
interface:
|
||||
display_name: "Writing Great Skills"
|
||||
short_description: "Principles for predictable skills"
|
||||
policy:
|
||||
allow_implicit_invocation: false
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user