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skills/.changeset/ask-matt-phase-boundaries.md
T
Matt PocockandClaude Opus 5 fa1e3227fb feat: give ask-matt the phase boundary decision tree
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>
2026-08-05 10:10:33 +01:00

1.5 KiB

mattpocock-skills
mattpocock-skills
patch

Give /ask-matt the phase boundary decision tree, replacing the two-bullet Crossing sessions section.

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. The router now carries all five options in order (continue, /clear, /handoff, subagent, /compact), with the ordered tree and its reasoning disclosed in a new PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md. Three fixes come with it:

  • /handoff was oversold. It read as the general bridge between context windows. It's narrow: you need it only when something has to travel — a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, or a side task forked mid-phase. What it buys is portability.
  • /compact is the default, not the first reach. It sits at the bottom of the tree, after the four cheaper or more precise questions above it. Starting there produces a session that's confidently wrong about whatever the summary flattened.
  • Two branches were missing entirely. Continue is the one to rule out first — it's the only move that keeps the conversation as a primary source rather than a summary of one — and a subagent handles anything scoped tightly enough to run AFK.

Context hygiene's escape hatch now says /compact rather than /handoff (same harness, same directory, at a boundary — the handoff clause doesn't apply), and the smart zone figure is updated from ~120k to ~150k tokens.