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Matt PocockandClaude Opus 5
fa1e3227fb
Replaces the two-bullet `Crossing sessions` section with all five options at a phase boundary — continue, /clear, /handoff, subagent, /compact — and discloses the ordered tree into a new PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md. Corrections that come with it: - /handoff was oversold as the general bridge between context windows. It is narrow: a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, or a side task forked mid-phase. What it buys is portability. - /compact is the default at the bottom of the tree, not the first reach. - Continue and subagent were missing branches entirely. Context hygiene's escape hatch now says /compact rather than /handoff, and the smart zone figure moves from ~120k to ~150k tokens. Resolves the T5 grilling ticket on the v1.2 release map. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
36 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
Quickstart:
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```bash
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npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill=ask-matt
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```
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```bash
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npx skills update ask-matt
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```
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[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/ask-matt)
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## What it does
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`ask-matt` is the router over the skills in this repo. You describe the situation you're in; it tells you which skill or flow fits and in what order to run them.
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It **does no work itself**. It doesn't grill, write a spec, or fix anything — it only orients. It exists for the **user-invoked** skills above all: nothing fires those for you, so *you* have to remember they exist, and `ask-matt` is the memory you offload that to. It also points at the model-invoked skills you'd reach for by name — `/tdd`, `/diagnosing-bugs`, `/prototype`, `/code-review`, and the two vocabulary references, `/domain-modeling` and `/codebase-design`. It answers "which one, and when", then hands you off to the skill that actually does the job.
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## When to reach for it
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You invoke this by typing `/ask-matt` — the agent won't reach for it on its own.
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Reach for it whenever you're unsure which skill or flow a situation calls for: you have an idea and don't know where to start, a pile of bug reports and don't know if they're for `/triage`, or two skills that look interchangeable and you can't tell them apart. If you already know the skill you want, skip the router and invoke it directly.
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## Flows, not just skills
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The idea `ask-matt` gives you to think with is the **flow** — a path *through* the skills rather than a single one. Most work runs along one **main flow** (idea → ship: grill → spec → tickets → implement → review), two **on-ramps** merge onto it (a triage lane for incoming bugs and requests; a codebase-health lane that generates ideas), and everything else is a **standalone** you reach for on its own. Ask a question and you get placed on the right flow, at the right step — not just handed a tool.
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## Phase boundaries
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The other idea it hands you is the **phase boundary**. A **phase** is a chunk of work inside a session — the grilling, the implementation, the QA — and the boundary between two of them is where you decide what to do with the context you've built up. You have five options: **continue**, **`/clear`**, **`/handoff`**, a **subagent**, or **`/compact`**. `ask-matt` carries the decision tree that orders them, and the two corrections most people need: `/handoff` is narrow — it earns its keep only when something has to *travel* (a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, a side task forked mid-phase) — and `/compact` is the tree's default at the bottom, not its first reach. Reach for the tree at a boundary; mid-phase there's nothing to decide.
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## Where it fits
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`ask-matt` is the **router** — the standalone map that sits over the whole set. It is the node every other docs page links back to as [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt), so it never sits *in* a chain; it points *into* every chain. From here you'll most often land on [grill-with-docs](https://aihero.dev/skills-grill-with-docs), the head of the main flow, or [triage](https://aihero.dev/skills-triage), the on-ramp for work you didn't create. When even the router's own picture is stale, its [Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/ask-matt) is the map of record.
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