# Explicit `/setup-matt-pocock-skills` pointer only for hard dependencies

Engineering skills depend on per-repo config (issue tracker, triage label vocabulary, domain doc layout) seeded by `/setup-matt-pocock-skills`. Some skills cannot meaningfully function without that config — they have to publish to a specific issue tracker or apply a specific label string. Others only use it to sharpen output (vocabulary, ADR awareness) and degrade gracefully without it.

We split these into **hard-dependency** and **soft-dependency** skills:

- **Hard dependency** (`to-issues`, `to-prd`, `triage`) — include an explicit one-liner: _"… should have been provided to you — run `/setup-matt-pocock-skills` if not."_ Without the mapping, output is wrong, not just fuzzy.
- **Soft dependency** (`diagnose`, `tdd`, `improve-codebase-architecture`, `zoom-out`) — reference "the project's domain glossary" and "ADRs in the area you're touching" in vague prose only. If the docs aren't there, the skill still works; output is just less sharp.

The split keeps soft-dependency skills token-light and avoids cargo-culting the setup pointer into places where it isn't load-bearing.