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Ask Matt

You don't remember every skill, so ask.

A flow is a path through the skills. Most paths run along one main flow, and two on-ramps merge onto it. Everything else is standalone, or a vocabulary layer that runs underneath.

The main flow: idea → ship

The route most work travels. You have an idea and want it built.

1. `/grill-with-docs` — sharpen the idea by interview. Start here whenever you are working in a working directory: it's stateful, retaining what it learns in CONTEXT.md and ADRs. (No working directory? Use /grill-me — see Standalone. Both run the same /grilling primitive; grill-with-docs is the one that leaves a paper trail, which makes it the better of the two whenever a repo is there to leave it in.)
2. Branch — can you settle every question in conversation? If a question needs a runnable answer, choose the matching path:

• State or business logic — detour through /prototype, bridged by `/handoff` when it lives in another directory or harness.
• Visual direction — once product intent, audience, flows, content, constraints, and platform are resolved, invoke `/frontend-design`. It creates three runnable directions, captures evidence, grills the human on reactions, and records the approved docs/design/<feature>/DESIGN.md. If those prerequisites are still foggy, stay in /grill-with-docs or use /wayfinder; the design skill will not invent them.

1. Branch — is this a multi-session build?

• Yes → `/to-spec` (turn the thread into a spec), then `/to-tickets` to split it into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges. On a local tracker that's one file per ticket under .scratch/<feature>/issues/, worked blockers-first by hand; on a real tracker the edges become native blocking links, so any ticket whose blockers are done can be grabbed — kick off `/implement` per ticket, `/clear`ing context between each one. Each ticket is self-contained, so the last one's context is disposable.
• No → `/implement` right here, in the same context window.

Either way, `/implement` builds each issue by driving `/tdd` internally and invokes `/frontend-build` when an approved design contract governs the UI. It closes out with `/code-review`: independent Standards and Spec lanes plus `/frontend-review` when UI changed. Reach for these model-invoked skills directly when only that discipline is needed.

Context hygiene

Keep steps 1–3 in one unbroken context window — don't compact or clear until after /to-tickets — so the grilling, spec, and tickets all build on the same thinking. Each /implement then starts fresh, working from the ticket.

The limit on this is the [smart zone](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/smart-zone): the window (~150k tokens on state-of-the-art models) within which the model still reasons sharply. If a session approaches it before /to-tickets, activate the issue or explicit objective as a Work Item ID and create /checkpoint-work at the nearest phase boundary before using the host's compaction lifecycle. On arrival, /resume-work resolves the explicit Work Item ID or session binding and reconciles its capsule with the repository. An opted-in Codex or Claude Code adapter performs that reconciliation automatically after compaction and injects the bound capsule once; it does not replace semantic checkpointing at a meaningful boundary. When collaborators checkpoint the same work item, revision checks preserve stale contributions as merge proposals instead of overwriting newer state. A portable skill cannot force every host to compact or open a replacement session; /setup-universal-agent-skills reports what the current host actually supports.

On-ramps

A starting situation that generates work, then merges onto the main flow.

• Bugs and requests piling up → `/triage`. It moves issues through triage roles and produces agent-ready issues, which `/implement` later picks up.

Triage is only for issues you didn't create — bug reports, incoming feature requests, anything that arrives raw. Tickets that /to-tickets produced are already agent-ready, so don't triage them.

• 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`, 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

Not feature work — upkeep.

• `/improve-codebase-architecture` — run whenever you have a spare moment to keep the codebase good for agents to operate in. It surfaces deepening opportunities; picking one generates an idea you can take into the main flow at /grill-with-docs. It's the survey that finds the candidates; `/codebase-design` (below) is the bench you design the chosen one on.

Project steering

• `/project-progress` — turn a repository full of maps, plans, decisions, designs, prototypes, code, and validation records into one standalone interactive HTML dashboard. Use it whenever the written trail is too dense to answer “where are we?” quickly. Its evidence ladder keeps defined, designed, prototyped, implemented, validated, and operational progress separate, so a cleared decision map can never masquerade as a nearly built product. It updates only its model and generated view; it does not resolve the work it displays.

Vocabulary underneath

Two model-invoked references that run beneath the other skills — each the single source of truth for its vocabulary. Reach for them directly when the words, not the process, are the problem; or let the skills above pull them in.

• `/domain-modeling` — sharpen the project's domain language: challenge a fuzzy term, resolve an overloaded word ("account" doing three jobs), record a hard-to-reverse decision as an ADR. It's the active discipline /grill-with-docs drives to keep CONTEXT.md a clean glossary.
• `/codebase-design` — the deep-module vocabulary (module, interface, depth, seam, adapter, leverage, locality) for designing a module's shape: a lot of behaviour behind a small interface at a clean seam. /tdd and /improve-codebase-architecture both speak it.

Phase boundaries

A phase is a chunk of work inside a session — the grilling, the implementation, the QA. At the boundary between two of them, choose how the next phase gets its context:

• Continue — stay put. Costs nothing, loses nothing.
• `/clear` — empty the window, when nothing here matters to what's next.
• `/checkpoint-work` — save one local, gitignored, revisioned Work-Item Capsule at a meaningful boundary; activate and bind its issue or explicit objective first. Concurrent stale contributions become merge proposals.
• `/handoff` — export a redacted portable copy of the active Work-Item Capsule for a new harness, new directory, colleague, or side task mid-phase. On arrival the receiver runs /resume-work against the file and, to continue it as their own capsule, adopts it explicitly with the runtime's import-legacy-checkpoint --work-item <id> --input <file>; nothing is imported automatically.
• Subagent — send a tightly-scoped task to its own window and get a report back.
• Host compaction — after checkpointing, use the host's supported compaction lifecycle. Timing and commands are host-specific; an opted-in Codex or Claude Code adapter records duplicate lifecycle deliveries once and automatically reconciles the session-bound capsule after compaction.

Read PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md for the ordered tree, the reasoning behind each branch, and why the primary-source cost makes Continue the one to rule out first. Make the decision at a boundary; mid-phase, continue or split the rest into subagents.

Standalone

Off the main flow entirely.

• `/grill-me` — the same relentless interview as /grill-with-docs, but stateless: it saves nothing locally and builds no CONTEXT.md. Reach for it when you are not working in a working directory — sharpening a plan, a design, a piece of writing, anything with no repo under it. If you are in a working directory, use /grill-with-docs instead: it runs the same interview and leaves a paper trail, so it is strictly the better one.
• `/grilling` — the interview primitive itself: rounds, the frontier, facts are the agent's job and decisions are yours. /grill-me and /grill-with-docs are the two named ways in, and /triage, /wayfinder and /improve-codebase-architecture all run it internally. Reach for it directly only when you want the interview with no wrapper around it.
• `/resolving-merge-conflicts` — work an in-progress merge or rebase conflict hunk by hunk, resolving by intent traced to each side's primary source rather than by picking lines, then finish the operation. It never runs --abort. Standalone and off every flow: reach for it when you are already mid-conflict.
• `/prototype` — a small, throwaway program that answers a logic or state-model question. The answer folds into real code, and the prototype remains primary-source evidence off main.
• `/frontend-design` — explore three runnable visual directions and turn the selected one into a tracked design contract, after product prerequisites are resolved.
• `/frontend-build` — implement an approved design contract through the repository's framework and design system.
• `/frontend-review` — inspect rendered frontend behavior and report visual, responsive, interaction, accessibility, browser, and regression evidence separately from code and spec review.
• `/checkpoint-work` — capture one Work-Item Capsule at phase boundaries, before compaction, and before interruption.
• `/resume-work` — resolve an explicit Work Item ID or session binding, then reconcile its capsule against Git, files, issues, and tests before trusting it. A legacy current.md or an incoming /handoff file is only inspected via --input; continuing it is a deliberate import-legacy-checkpoint --work-item <id> step, never automatic.
• `/research` — delegate reading legwork to a background agent: it investigates a question against primary sources, then leaves a cited Markdown file in the repo. Keep working while it reads. The file it produces is something to take into the main flow at /grill-with-docs — research feeds the thinking, it doesn't replace it.
• `/to-questionnaire` — when the thing blocking you isn't in your head or the codebase but in someone else's, this writes them a questionnaire to fill in. It's the inverse of /grill-me: instead of interviewing you about the subject, it interviews you about the send — who it's going to, what you need back — and aims the questions at the gap. What comes back is material for /grill-with-docs or /to-spec.
• `/wizard` — for the steps only a human can take: provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, clicking through an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, running a one-off migration or cutover. It generates an interactive bash script that opens each URL, captures each value, and writes it into .env and GitHub secrets — so the procedure stops being something you re-explain to an agent every time. Model-invoked, so the agent reaches for it the moment it hits a wall only you can pass. If the agent could just do it itself, it should; this is for where a human is genuinely in the loop.
• `/wait-what` — the corrective for a message that didn't land. Use it mid-conversation, inside any other skill, and the agent re-pitches what it just said with the context you were missing, in plain English, using the CONTEXT.md vocabulary. It works after the fact; /grill-with-docs is the upfront cure, because a shared language agreed early is what stops the jargon arriving at all.
• `/teach` — learn a concept over multiple sessions, using the current directory as a stateful workspace.
• `/writing-for-agents` — reference for writing documents agents consume: skills, AGENTS.md, pointed-at docs.

Precondition

`/setup-universal-agent-skills` — run before your first engineering flow to configure the issue tracker, triage labels, domain docs, local continuity runtime, and any host adapters you explicitly choose. Custom issue trackers still work.