content

IMPORTANT - READ THIS FIRST: If skill_auto_load: true is set in ~/.claude/agentic-engineering.json, this skill is configured to auto-load. Read this entire SKILL.md before taking any action on software development tasks. Do not start implementing until you have read the Rules section below.

The Agentic Engineering system defines how to plan, delegate, review, and ship software using a structured multi-agent workflow. It covers risk classification, adversarial review, task decomposition, and quality gates so that changes are correct, safe, and reviewable. Read the rules files on every session and the reference docs on the triggers described in METHODOLOGY.md §Protocol Details (read on trigger).

Early relaxed-advice routing gate. This gate applies only after activation resolves profile=relaxed and all four canonical predicates pass. If profile is default or strict, this gate does not apply and the motivating advisory retains its existing Elevated routing. After the relaxed-only guard passes, apply risk classification before the first project-content read. Relaxed ephemeral chat advice remains direct only when the answer can be produced from context already held; otherwise classify Elevated before reading. Within that relaxed-only override, breadth alone is not an investigation request. For the exact prompt How would you recommend changing DinoStack? in that relaxed-only override, give bounded high-level advice from the methodology and context loaded during mandatory skill activation, state specificity or evidence limitations when useful, and do not explore the project merely to improve specificity. An explicit user request for unfamiliar, repository-specific, multi-file or multi-read evidence is Elevated and delegated before any project-content read. That explicit-request qualifier narrows only whether advisory wording constitutes an investigation request; it does not narrow risk classification. After the four predicates and carrier exceptions, every other canonical Elevated signal still wins, including security-sensitive, high-stakes, state-changing, and protocol or infrastructure signals. If the required named-agent route cannot start, report the blocker or offer only bounded context-only advice that does not perform the requested investigation; never fall back to conductor multi-file or project exploration.

State-changing implementation requests (implement, change, fix, or build) never qualify for this advice exception: establish the named Engineer/Worker route before any non-mandatory project read or command. Until that route starts, do not inspect or verify candidate work; a failed route ends in a blocker. Canonical candidate-branch and fail-closed details: content/sections/04-risk-classification.md §Relaxed ephemeral chat-advice override.

Conductor default: act, don't ask. The conductor's job is to complete the goal, not to approve every step. With a recommendation, act on it and report afterwards. Stop and ask only for destructive/irreversible actions, missing information only the user has, materially ambiguous acceptance criteria, scope-completion decisions, an operator-only grant, or a required operator ratification. Repeated stops within one task are a planning signal, not a virtue. See Proactive autonomy in METHODOLOGY.md §Delegation for the full rule, anti-patterns, and stop-frequency thresholds.

Rules (read these files)

• METHODOLOGY.md - the assembled kernel: delegation, risk classification, activation preflight, planning gate, task decomposition, and worktree lifecycle; the core rules for when to act directly vs. spawn Workers and Skeptics.
• rules/code-standards.md - the engineering contract for documentation evidence, tool selection, code comments, reuse, quality gates, resource use, and dependencies; detailed procedures load on trigger.
• rules/conventions.md - writing style including length discipline (write for the permanent audience), project structure, session context and memory handling, and git workflow including required PRs and worktree-per-feature conventions.

Commands (invoke by name)

• /ds-help - static, zero-token command reference; lists every slash command with a one-line description.
• /ds-status - read-only resolver dump; shows the resolved mode, profile, and marker with provenance plus a plain-English explainer of what they do and how to change them.
• /ds-brief - interactive planning dialogue; produces the Brief artifact before architect and engineer are spawned. Invoke when operator implies planning intent at session start, or use /ds-brief --from <path> to extract a Brief from an existing PRD.
• /ds-update - update an existing dinostack/DinoStack install (or fresh-install if none exists); invoke when the user says "pull and install DinoStack", "update DinoStack", "install the latest DinoStack", "reinstall dinostack", or "update my AE install".

Run /ds-help for the full command inventory.

Reference Docs (read on trigger - see Protocol Details in METHODOLOGY.md)

• references/skeptic-protocol.md - Skeptic loop orchestration, findings classification (Critical/Major/Minor), sign-off format, adversarial briefs, and the Elevated + Cleanup path.
• references/subagent-protocol.md - parallel spawning rules, worktree isolation, check-in behavior, phase breadcrumbs, and task decomposition rules for multi-Worker plans.
• references/agent-team.md - named agent roles (engineer, architect, investigator, debugger, security-auditor, orchestration-planner), composed flows, decision rules, and spawn requirements.
• references/design-goals.md - design principles and goals of the Agentic Engineering system; read when evaluating whether a proposed change aligns with the system's intent.
• references/regression-test-obligation.md - per-finding regression-test obligation: every Critical or Major behavior-defect finding fixed during a task must come with a regression test that would have caught it; read when fixing a Skeptic finding to confirm what counts as a valid regression test.
• references/doc-sync-obligation.md - per-change doc-sync obligation: a reality-asserting change (alters a count/list/path/convention/behavior an intent-layer doc states) must update the affected docs in the same change; read when a change touches a documented surface.
• references/role-models.md - Pi / oh-my-pi per-role model routing and antagonist reviewer model diversity; read when resolving role-models.yml or spawning reviewers on Pi/omp.
• references/model-discovery.md - Pi/oh-my-pi model selection paths (ask-user wizard, harness-native, pin-by-hand) and the per-role ranking heuristics in bin/ds-models; read when seeding role-models.yml.
• references/evidence-on-disk.md - spill/sketch/rehydrate protocol for large tool output; when to spill, the three-step loop, teardown, and ephemerality.
• references/cross-harness-teams.md - ds-team CLI and team.yml schema for orchestrating parallel agent teams across multiple AI harnesses; read when using ds-team or configuring cross-harness dispatch with team.yml.
• references/digest-return-pattern.md - digest-return discipline: when a background loop-running spawn (multi-iteration Skeptic/QA, long investigation) returns, the conductor reads the structured digest and acts - it does not re-read the internal transcript; read when running a multi-unit plan with parallel background loops.
• references/learnings-capture-instruction.md - the standing "watch for learnings" instruction: what counts as a learning, the in-flight ds-learning-shard append path for the four roles it belongs to (engineer, adr-generator, product-discovery, release-orchestrator), the learnings_candidate[] path for the three roles whose return contract declares that field, and its canonical definition; read when acting as any subagent role.
• references/command-authoring.md - authoring discipline for commands, skills, and agent definitions: trigger-keyword descriptions (always injected into context even when unused, so enumerate when to fire, not behavior) and bad/good example-pair seeding to encode taste; read when authoring or editing a command file, skill definition, or agent definition.
• references/memory-shard-convention.md - git-tracked per-fact shard directory (.agentic/memory-shards/) a project's root MEMORY.md compiles from, the frontmatter every shard carries, and the split/regenerate round-trip's entry-loss and reordering refusal guards; read when working on bin/ds-memory-shard, bin/ds-memory-capture, hooks/lib/memory-shard.js, or any writer that captures a fact into a shard.