fix: finish promoted-bucket wiring for resolving-merge-conflicts and implement

Close a standing CLAUDE.md-invariant gap where two promoted skills were
not fully wired into the plugin manifest and READMEs.

- resolving-merge-conflicts (model-invoked): add to .claude-plugin/plugin.json,
  top-level README.md, and skills/engineering/README.md.
- implement (user-invoked): add the missing line to skills/engineering/README.md
  (already present in plugin.json and the top README).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

.changeset/grilling-general-use.md

@@ -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.

.changeset/wayfinder-research-subagents.md

@@ -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*.

.changeset/yagni-scope-improve-architecture.md

@@ -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.

.claude-plugin/plugin.json

@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
     "./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",

README.md

@@ -168,6 +168,7 @@ 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
 
@@ -182,4 +183,4 @@ 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`.

docs/engineering/grill-with-docs.md

@@ -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.
 

docs/engineering/improve-codebase-architecture.md

@@ -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.

docs/engineering/wayfinder.md

@@ -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

docs/productivity/grill-me.md

@@ -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.
 

docs/productivity/grilling.md

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ 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 walks down the decision tree branch by branch, resolving the dependencies between decisions one at a time 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.
 
@@ -22,9 +22,9 @@ 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 **decision 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.
 
 ## Pulled out on purpose
 

skills/engineering/README.md

@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ 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.
+- **[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`.

skills/engineering/improve-codebase-architecture/SKILL.md

@@ -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:
 

skills/engineering/wayfinder/SKILL.md

@@ -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
 

skills/productivity/README.md

@@ -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.

skills/productivity/grilling/SKILL.md

@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
 ---
 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 me relentlessly about every aspect of this until we reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the decision tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one-by-one. For each question, provide your recommended answer.
 
 Ask the questions one at a time, waiting for feedback on each question before continuing. Asking multiple questions at once is bewildering.
 
-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.
+If a *fact* can be found by exploring the environment (filesystem, tools, etc.), look it up rather than asking me. The *decisions*, though, are mine — put each one to me and wait for my answer.
 
-Do not enact the plan until I confirm we have reached a shared understanding.
+Do not act on it until I confirm we have reached a shared understanding.